


Tall Skies

by Black_Briar



Series: Who Watches the Heroes [4]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Venom Symbiote - Freeform, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:19:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 83,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Briar/pseuds/Black_Briar
Summary: Weeks after being separated from Venom, everything seems to be going well for Peter.  His near-death experience is a thing of the past, he's settling back into life at the compound, and HYDRA is about to be wiped off the map for good.  With not much time left until he has to go back to Queens for his senior year, a few weeks of peace and recovery are all he can hope for.The universe isn't quite that kind.





	1. Fellow Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back, friends! I'll be honest, this has been a DAY, but I said this would go up on Friday and that's exactly what's going to happen. I'll be sticking to my normal Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule for now.
> 
> We're getting to the point where you might want to have read at least part one to understand what's happening here. If you do want to read this on its own, the bare bones are that Peter was infected by Venom and injected with a gel composed of Venom's physical form in order to save his life. Oh, and Peter Quill crash-landed in the backyard of the Avengers compound with the power stone, and Steve found a gauntlet in Germany with a chip of mysterious yellow stone in it. I recommend you read the other parts first, but you may be able to scrape by if you just know that.
> 
> I hope you enjoy part four, and don't hesitate to leave me comments or kudos if you do!

Peter thought he was doing pretty well as an Avenger, all things considered.

Well, okay—he'd messed up a lot, gotten some people hurt, and nearly gotten himself killed, but he still thought he was doing okay. He was an Avenger now! He'd killed Venom! He'd helped save Captain America and Sergeant Barnes from HYDRA! He was finally functioning as a real member of the team, going on actual missions and stopping actual supervillains from destroying the planet.

He was on a roll. And if that roll included the fact that he was now permanently infected with a strain of the Venom Project, then that was totally fine! He wasn't freaking out about the whole thing at all.

Nope! No way.

...Right.

It was just that—well, things were a bit different now. Venom's actual consciousness wasn't there, but the strength and regenerative abilities and literal binding material was tucked up in his chest, holding his organs together. Without it he would be dead, so he was thankful…but it was still unnerving to know that it was there. If he cut open his chest right now, all the gloppy parts of Venom would fall out. And that horrified him.

But that didn't matter anymore. There was nothing he could do about it. He was totally okay and fine with the situation, and that wasn't something that was allowed to change.

What  _was_ allowed to change was pretty much everything else in his life. So of course, that was what happened. Just as everything began to calm down—just as Steve and Bucky began to recover, and Tony started to relax, and they finally got their hands on a completed map of all the remaining HYDRA bases in the  _entire world_ —a spaceship crashed in their front yard.

The strange man in the spaceship crashed with that glowing purple stone in his pocket, the name  _Gamora_ falling off his lips before he passed out, and everything changed again.

The glowing stone was still under heavy investigation. It had only been a few days since the strange man had crash landed in the front yard of the Avengers compound, and already it looked like Bruce had hit a bit of a dead end in his research. All he could determine was that it had a similar power signature to the Tesseract and Loki's scepter, which also had a similar power signature to that strange gauntlet Steve had picked up and even used in Germany, but that was about it. He couldn't determine its origin or its purpose or really anything else about it. They'd kind of hit a dead end.

"It's strange," was the most Bruce would say. "The stone is incredibly similar to both Steve's gauntlet and the stone that's embedded in Vision's forehead. Not to mention, they all share a striking resemblance to the Tesseract. It's almost as if they're all  _related_  somehow."

And that was the most he knew. Bruce wasn't quite willing to ship the whole thing off to Wakanda yet, though that was quickly becoming more and more of a necessity, so he locked himself away and kept experimenting.

Meanwhile, the Avengers had something important to take care of. Namely, that thing about having a map of every remaining HYDRA base in the world. Because yeah, that was definitely something they had and should be taking advantage of.

Peter had about two weeks left before he had to go back to Queens for his senior year. He intended to spend that week helping the Avengers destroy what remained of HYDRA.

So he trained. Because that was the one thing that would make Tony believe that he was one hundred percent back on his feet after the Venom incident, so he had to train as much as possible until he proved he wasn't about to keel over foaming at the mouth.

It was more difficult than he would have liked.

When he'd first gotten his powers a few years back, it had been a rush. He'd been so excited, because he was just this fourteen-year-old kid from Queens whose edgiest after school activity was sitting behind a table with a bunch of other nerds and answering trivia questions for points, and suddenly he had strength and agility beyond his wildest dreams. He'd spent hours and hours just sitting in a back alley trying to push himself harder, test how strong he'd become. That experience had been exciting, because he hadn't yet understood what hell his power would put him through or what responsibility they would place on his shoulders. He'd been so focused on the thrill of it all that he hadn't considered the very real danger present in the situation.

Now—now he understood.

Now he'd experienced a lot of things. He'd fought his way through all of the minor criminals in Queens, then moved on to Vulture, then to HYDRA, then to Venom. He'd come closer to death than anyone really wanted to tell him, and he'd had a piece of Venom glopped into his insides to hold him together. Now he understood power, understood how scary it was and what it could do to people. And just as he'd begun to really understand, he'd been hit with another dose of it.

Venom's powers were terrifying. His strength, his regenerative abilities—all of it. And Peter had them now, probably for good, so he had to learn to deal with that.

He was like,  _insanely_ strong now. As in, he'd wrecked a few doors before realizing that he had to use a light touch. As in, seriously bruising Natasha's arms during a training session without even  _trying,_  and then feeling absolutely awful about it for the next week. As in, reaching to grab a part of Tony's suit while they were working together in the lab and crumpling it beyond repair. He'd apologized profusely for that one, but Tony just shrugged it off and said he'd been intending to start a new prototype soon anyway. He'd swept the broken piece cleanly under the table and started on the replacement immediately, like it was no big deal. Like Peter hadn't just reached out and crumpled a part of his reinforced titanium alloy suit without meaning to.

_"Really,_ kid, it's no big deal." Tony had put a hand on his shoulder, had smiled down at him without a care in the world. "How about I throw together something to help you get used to your new powers? Like a really strong punching bag. Or—something else? If you think of anything that would help, I can have it to you by noon."

And of course Peter had nothing to say to that—how was he supposed to know what would help, let alone presume to ask Tony for such a thing? So he'd just stuttered out something about being totally fine, thanks, and absolutely not in need of assistance!

Twenty-four hours later, Peter walked into his section of the compound and found a series of metal blocks, ranging from aluminum to titanium to pure vibranium, along with a note telling him to hit them as hard as he could and see how much they dented.

His fist rang off the vibranium, but the titanium crumpled after a few good blows. Tony seemed pleased when he saw him next, and a few days after that he was sauntering up and handing him a new suit with fancy shock absorbers to make sure he didn't utterly obliterate whatever he touched.

Tony had explained, "It's kind of like T'challa's suit, only totally different because I'm still wearing Shuri down to let me in on all their secrets. When you punch, it takes the excess force and redistributes into the veins of the suit. You can adjust the absorbers according to how much power you want to use, and when you want to release the pent-up energy you can let them down and give it all you've got. Pretty fancy, right?"

"Y-yeah, Mr. Stark, it's really fancy!" But that was all he could say, because he was staring down at the new suit with the flashy bells and whistles and being just generally awed that  _this was his life_ , where Tony Stark ruffled his hair and handed him a suit that he'd designed just for him.

But that was beside the point, really. He'd taken the suit and practiced with it and gone up against Steve in training, who he was the least likely to hurt, and he'd gotten almost used to it.  _Almost._

Okay—he was still in the middle of getting used to it. The suit helped, but he couldn't exactly wear it everywhere except that he absolutely  _did_ wear it everywhere, but without the mask and with his normal clothes covering everything up because he knew he'd have to deal with this eventually, but he just couldn't right now. If he wore the suit everywhere, it took all his excess power and stored it all up and then he couldn't break anything important and get yelled at.

…It was an incredibly effective and not at all unhealthy way of dealing with his new life.

But Tony didn't need to know that.

And speaking of Tony…

"Hey,  _hey_ —can we focus, here? I know we're jumpy, but there are about a dozen HYDRA bases out there waiting for us to take them down. No— _Barnes_ , so help me god if you give Cap that little half glance one more time I will kick you right out of this meeting! Don't think I don't see you  _judging—!"_

"I'm not judging anything! All I'm saying is that if we're trying to take out twelve bases with eleven people, maybe we should bring in S.H.I.E.L.D. to sweep up after us."

Tony scowled. "We don't need  _babysitters_ , Barnes. We'll pick off one base at a time, clean up after ourselves, and soon we'll be home free and have all the time in the world to deal with the spaceman that crash landed in our front yard and  _refuses_  to wake up. Easy."

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache. "Come on, you two. Settle down."

Bucky raised a brow. "You're telling  _me_ to settle down? I'm not the one who's getting angry because someone is  _looking_  at someone else."

"Hey!"

Steve sighed. "Can we  _focus,_ here? We've got twelve bases out there and not a lot of time to take them down before they either move or branch out into additional bases. This is our chance to get rid of HYDRA permanently, so we can deal with our new  _problem_."

"And we're going to do that," Tony said. "Just as soon as we figure out a good plan."

"Okay, how about this?" Natasha pointed at one of the bases, the one closest to New York. "We go to this base and we attack it and we take it down. Good plan?"

"That's the best plan!" Clint said. "I vote for that plan."

"And I vote that we take our time and actually  _strategize."_ Steve looked between faces, incredulous. "The last time we went into a HYDRA base without a solid plan, Bucky and I ended up trapped below ground with a bunch of monsters. Let's come up with something more concrete this time."

"Oh, come on—what's more concrete than showing up and bashing the doors down?"

Steve pointedly ignored Clint, looking to the map of bases. "Let's  _focus_. Twelve bases, eleven of us—so let's split up. We can take out the minor bases first, then move up until we reach their headquarters. That one will require a bit more finesse, so we'll save it for last."

"Or," Tony said, "we take it out first and knock out the little guys later."

Steve put his head in his hands. "Tony…"

They kept bickering, and Peter ducked his head down to hide a smile. It was nice, having things back to the way they were supposed to be. For a while there the bickering had been more like full-blown arguing, and he'd worried that they were going to split into two teams again. Bucky trying to join the team hadn't exactly gone over easily. But now everyone had fallen into a routine where Tony hated Bucky but respected Steve enough to tolerate his presence, and Bucky didn't like Tony much but liked Steve  _more_  than enough to put up with him. It was a fragile peace, but it was still peace and Peter was mostly relaxed as he watched the team debate. It…had just been a tense few weeks.

"How about this, then? We pair off and take out two bases per team, making our way to headquarters, where we'll meet up and crush HYDRA headquarters together. Good?"

"Are we sure two people will be enough?"

"For these bullshit rinky-dink bases in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, I'm sure."

Steve glanced to the rest of the Avengers, uncertain. "What do you guys think?"

Natasha shrugged. "Two per base sounds good to me, Steve. We'll crush HYDRA and meet in the middle. We'll cut that last head right off."

"Could be risky," Sam said. "But if it means taking out HYDRA once and for all, I'm in. They've caused us a lot of pain in the past few months."

"Yeah," Tony muttered, shooting Peter a glance out of the corner of his eye. "They have."

Clint raised a hand. "No objections here. The only question is who's partnering up with who."

"It shouldn't be that difficult," Wanda said. "Vision and I can take out that base there." She pointed at the map, at a mid-level base in South America. "The rest of you can decide where you'll be heading."

Clint scoffed, "What, you want to send two of the most powerful guys on the team out to one base? Come on, Wanda, that's unfair!"

"What," Natasha quipped, elbowing Clint in the side, "are you scared the two of us won't be able to handle an entire base on our own?"

"Hey, I—!"

Tony raised a hand. "No, he's right. Wanda, pair up with Clint. Vision, with Natasha."

"Trying to give me a babysitter, Tony?" Natasha leaned her head on her hand, a mischievous smile creeping across her face.

Tony kept a very straight face and said, "I'm not falling for that. Cap, do you want to work with Barnes on this one?"

"On  _every_  one," Bucky answered for him, and Steve nodded in agreement.

Still, Tony kept a perfectly level expression. There was no use in opening up that old can of worms, not when they had the chance to take out all of HYDRA. "Great," he said simply. "Sam, you can choose whatever team you like since we have an odd number. I'll take the kid."

Peter tried very hard to  _not_ start beaming like an idiot, because Tony Stark had chosen  _him._ It shouldn't have been this much of a surprise by now—they'd worked together a lot at this point, building suits and saving the world and all that—but there was still something amazing about knowing that Tony had been able to choose from anyone on the team, and he'd still picked him. He'd still picked the seventeen-year-old kid who more often than not caused serious problems for the team (see: Venom Project).

"Sound good?" Tony asked, looking from face to face. "Yes? Good. Now everyone pick a base, and we can leave in a few days. We'll need that long to do the whole  _planning_ thing and get ready for a fight."

Steve said, "The longer we wait the more likely it is that another base will pop up somewhere. We have to move fast."

"Yeah," Tony pointed out, "but that's not going to happen in the few days it takes us to get ready. You said it yourself, the last time we rushed in, bad things happened! I hate to say that you're right, but you're right. We should come up with a good plan."

"Well…" Steve looked back down at the map. The twelve bases were spread out across the world, with the final and largest one residing a few dozen miles outside Berlin. "I suppose we should do what we said and pair off, each team taking down their own separate bases and then meeting up in Germany to take down the last one."

"Unless someone is too injured to fight!" Clint threw in. "Then we should probably  _not_ do that."

"We'll deal with that if the time comes."

Because they'd had a lot of experience dealing with injured teammates lately, and it wasn't anything anyone wanted to think about. If they could just have  _one_  mission where someone didn't almost die…

Honestly, Peter wasn't even convinced that Steve and Bucky were back at one hundred percent. He wasn't even sure  _he_ was at one hundred percent. He still had dizzy spells every once and a while, probably as a result of having a completely foreign substance holding his insides in place, and every now and again he had these tiny flickers of light-headedness, but Tony knew and Wakanda knew and the scientists over there were still trying to figure out if they could extract what remained of Venom and replace it with something more compatible with a human-spider mutant. There hadn't been any progress.

"Okay," Steve said, "we'll leave in staggered groups so we all end up back in Germany at the same time. Everyone choose a few locations, then we can figure out who's leaving when."

Tony's hand shot up. "I call the one in Canada! You're okay with that, right, Pete?"

He jumped. "Wha—oh, of course! Anything you want, Mr. Stark."

"No, seriously—it'll be cold, but it's pretty close. We can pick something more tropical if you want; I'm pretty sure that one in the Bahamas—"

"It's fine, Mr. Stark!" Peter tried again. "Really, it's totally fine. We'll bring coats!"

He wrinkled a brow. "No, no…we'll work on the heater in your suit before we leave. Tonight sound good?"

"Um…yeah, sure."

"Great." Tony turned to the others and said, "that means the kid and I will leave last. The rest of you can pick wherever you want."

_Leaving last, Mr. Stark? What a coincidence, giving me the most time to work on my powers._

As if he could hear what he was thinking, Tony shot him a quick grin.

Peter rolled his eyes, amused, and watched as the others circled around the map and began to figure out where they were going to go. He didn't realize Tony was gone until he reappeared at his shoulder, smug as ever.

"So?" Tony said.

"So, what?"

"I bought us a little more time to figure those powers out, right?" Tony nudged him, a smile on his face. He'd been a lot happier lately, though there was still that underlying darkness that never seemed to leave. Peter thought that the whole Venom thing followed by Steve's incident had made him a little more appreciative of the times where no one was in immediate danger of dying. "You can spar with one of my automated suits if you want, and I can make sure your suit has a good heater before we jump into freezing temperatures."

"Oh, Mr. Stark, I…" Peter trailed off. He wasn't quite sure how to tell Tony that he'd already done enough, that he didn't want him to waste time working on the eighteenth iteration of the Spider-Man suit when he could be doing something like curing cancer or doing literally anything more productive than decking out some high school brat with cutting edge technology so he could proceed to nearly get himself and everyone around him killed. But he knew Tony. He knew that he didn't give up, didn't yield, never did anything other than exactly what he wanted to do. And this—spending all his time and energy on the constant reinvention of the Spider-Man suit—was something he'd decided he wanted to do.

Peter had no say.

Tony took his silence for agreement, clasping a hand to his shoulder. "Great, I'll see you down there at the usual time. I made a few modifications to my automated suits, so you can spar with them and hopefully  _not_  throw one through a wall again."

He winced. "Sorry about that. The strength, it's just…different."

"I know, kid. I promised I'd help you deal with it, and I will. It's my job to make sure you don't keel over, after all, and this time I'm going to do it right."

He looked down, not wanting Tony to see the embarrassed tinge to his cheeks. He'd never get used to this. The—the  _caring._ After May's death, after being taken in and looked after and saved time and time again, it was still difficult to get used to the Tony Stark that smiled openly and ruffled his hair and told him he was proud of him.

The others were still engrossed in choosing their bases, and Tony shot them an impatient look. "Hey," he said, "why don't you take off early and get to practicing? I'll be down soon."

"Oh—you don't need me for anything else?"

He shook his head. "These guys are just going to bicker for another half hour; there's no reason both of us should have to sit through it. Go on and practice. You know how to get the automated suits up and running, right?"

"The panel on the left wall."

"Got it in one, kid. Have fun."

He didn't think fun was quite the right word, but still he smiled and nodded and got to his feet because there was no way he was turning this down. Sitting in these meetings was kind of nerve-wracking, surrounded by the founding members of the Avengers and then some, so he'd take any opportunity to slip out early. Especially if it meant working on his new abilities.

Tony gave him one last pat on the shoulder as he left. The others didn't pay him much mind, wrapped up in their conversations, so Peter was able to step out without incident.

The compound had been completely repaired after HYDRA's attack, looking as if nothing had ever happened. If Peter hadn't been there, he never would have believed that a large portion of the compound had been damaged or completely destroyed.

It was almost like a ghost town, with everyone tucked away in a meeting. Normally Wanda would be lounging in one of the living areas, or Vision would be reading a book, or Clint would be kicking back in front of the television. Normally Steve and Bucky would be in the training room, sparring and laughing and telling stories of what Steve referred to as the 'good old days,' and Natasha would be there practicing hand-to-hand with whoever was free. Some days it would be Sam, others it would be Clint, others still would be Peter himself. He still hadn't won a fight against her.

And Bruce—Bruce was still dealing with the strange gauntlet Steve had picked out of Germany and the strange purple stone, and the strange man that accompanied it.

When Peter reached Tony's lab, it was dark and cold and silent. Tony always seemed to work with not enough light and not enough heat, and although Peter always made a point of cranking the thermostat and turning on all the overhead lights— _yes_ all _of them, Tony, you can't sit here and work in darkness because it's bad for your eyes and you need the heater so you don't freeze to death_ —he always seemed to find the man working in the same, poor conditions.

Rolling his eyes, Peter walked over to the panel in the wall and flicked on the heat and  _all_ of the lights. The instant he did the room was illuminated by the pale but harsh glow from the ceiling, all of the suits and trinkets and cluttered work stations coming into view.

Peter wrinkled his nose at the mess. Normally things weren't quite this cluttered, but Tony had hit a wall on his most recent project and when he was pouting he didn't tend to clean up after himself. But cleaning up was usually something Pepper liked to do, so Peter made his way over to another panel, the one that hooked into the automated suits, and initiated the startup sequence. Then he reached for his new suit, removing the old one he tended to wear under his clothes pretty much always these days, affixed the new module to his chest, and tapped it once to release the nanotechnology.

_Woah._ He still hadn't gotten used to the feeling of the microscopic bots climbing over his skin and settling into place, solidifying into Tony's latest version of the suit. The one with vibranium worked in from the wrist down but nowhere else, because getting Wakanda to part with any of the stuff was still a little difficult and there were better things to do with it than shoving it into a teenager's costume.

Peter picked up the module containing his old suit, an earlier prototype of the power-dampening technology, and put it on one of the lab tables. He'd put it back on after practice, and no one would ever know. Behind him, in the corner of the lab Tony had cleared just so Peter could practice with his new suit and his new powers, the automated suits were beginning to stir.

_"Hello, Peter. What are we doing today?"_

He smiled. "Hey, Karen. Just sparring with the suits; can you set them to medium for me?"

_"Of course. As soon as you enter the predetermined sparring area, the round will begin."_

"Great, thanks." He made sure that his suit was working correctly (it was still a prototype, after all) and stepped onto the training mat.

_"Initiating training sequence."_

The first suit stepped forward, Peter raised an arm, and the fight began.

This time he did better. He didn't destroy anything he didn't mean to, and when he switched between storing and using kinetic energy from his punches he only popped the head off of one suit instead of all of them, like he'd accidentally done last time. He was getting better at controlling his strength. Not great, but…better.

…Even if feeling that strength coursing through him, strength that had once belonged to Venom, brought back memories that made him shake and grind his teeth and punch just a  _bit_ too hard so the next suit he landed a hit on crumpled beneath the force of the blow.

"Oh—I didn't mean to do that!"

_"Careful, Peter. You'll overload the suit again."_

"I know, I'm trying to—hey!" He yelped as one of the suits caught him in the chest, knocking him back. He raised a hand instinctually to punch back, but forgot just how much energy was stored at his fingertips until the thing was blown backward and crunched into a wall.

"Oh, come on! I'm trying, Karen, why isn't it working? I can't get the hang of this new suit!"

_"I'm afraid I can't answer that, Peter. There isn't a fault in your physical movement, so perhaps the cause is more…internal."_

"What?" Peter spluttered. "You mean like, emotional or something? Come on, Karen, that's ridiculous! I'm like, the most emotionally mature person on the team. I don't have any problems! Nope! None at all!"

Karen seemed unconvinced.  _"If you want me to contact Mr. Stark, I'm sure he can help—"_

"Wh—no, hang on, don't do that! I can't bother him with anything else, and I'm totally fine!"

_"Your heart rate is suspiciously elevated. Is there something you're not telling me?"_

"Oh god, Karen, just drop it! I'm fine, I really am, it's just something going wrong with the suit!"

_"I don't think—"_

Peter retracted his mask and Karen's voice was silenced. None of the other suits were attacking yet, waiting for orders, but Peter didn't feel like fighting anymore. Fighting made him feel a little sick anyway, sick because it wasn't his strength it was  _Venom's,_ it was his blood coursing through his veins, it was his power seeping into his limbs, and he didn't want that. Venom had nearly killed the entire team. He'd nearly killed Tony.

Peter didn't want his power.

But he didn't have a choice. So he took a deep breath, put his mask back on, and went back to sparring until Tony arrived.


	2. The Spell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I meant to get this up HOURS ago but I severely underestimated the amount of time it would take to edit. Not doing that again, thank you very much! You'd think I'd know better, with all the years I've been posting fanfiction.
> 
> Thanks so much for the comments and kudos on the first chapter! And if you're enjoying so far, I would love to hear from you!

By the time Tony got down to the lab, Peter was hard at work sparring with a few of the automated suits he'd given him just for that purpose.

Tony didn't go in right away. Instead he stood in the doorway and watched, waiting to see how Peter was handling the new suit. It was flashy and sleek and beautiful but deadly, some of his finest work, and Peter hadn't quite gotten the hang of it, but he was sure that once he did he would be amazing in combat. The whole Venom incident had left him stronger than even Cap himself—it was just a matter of figuring out how to use that strength without utterly obliterating enemies when the intent was simply to disable them.

He watched as Peter took a careful swing at one of the suits, his fist clanging off the metal and leaving a sizable dent. At first Tony thought Peter had succeeded in whatever goal he was pursuing, until he huffed in irritation and looked down at the gloves of his suit. They hadn't released the power properly. When Peter next convinced himself to punch, all of the power released at once and launched a suit into the wall. It practically shattered from the force.

Tony's heart ached as Peter yanked off the mask and glared at it, frustrated at his failure. He was certain the kid would figure this out eventually, it was just…well, it was difficult in the beginning. Peter was probably still dealing with the baggage of the whole incident, too—the baggage of having his free will overridden by Venom, the baggage of being forced to watch himself hurt his teammates, the baggage of nearly killing himself to stop Venom—which only made things far, far worse.

Peter sighed, stepping away from the training area, and Tony knew he was done.

"Hey, kid!"

Peter looked up as Tony stepped into the lab, eyes widening in surprise. "Mr. Stark! Is the meeting over?"

"Sure is." He closed the door behind him, walking further into the room and eyeing the suits Peter had trashed. Not as many as last time—he was getting better—but still enough to take up a few hours with repairs. "We're the last to leave for the mission, so we'll have some time to ourselves before we have to take off. Good time to work on the suit, right?"

Peter gave a quick nod. "Yeah, of course! It's—the new model is really good, Mr. Stark, I don't think you have to waste any more time improving it."

"Nonsense." He grabbed for Peter's arm, examining the vibranium mesh worked into the fabric covering his hands. "No damage," he noted. "I half worried you would be able to fracture the vibranium."

"I'm not quite that strong, Mr. Stark." He took his arm back gently, as if afraid of hurting him by accident. "The suit working fine, so you can focus on other things. I just need to get the hang of it!"

He hummed noncommittally. "What are you not getting? I can change it, whatever it is." Because he'd seen Peter struggling, but no matter how many tweaks he made to the suit it never seemed to work right for him. And of course, Peter was too afraid of becoming an inconvenience to really say what was bothering him.

"It's…" Peter trailed off with a wince. "I'm just having a hard time figuring out when to release the stored power, and even then, it's just hard to get used to. It's like…I thought I knew exactly what my powers were like, right? And then suddenly I got hit with a whole new wave of stuff I have to understand and weaponize, and it's really difficult. I'll get there! It's just a steep learning curve and all that."

Tony nodded, but he wasn't so sure that Peter was telling the whole truth. "Well I still want to get that heater hooked up, so take that thing off and let's get to work."

"Oh—of course!" Peter tapped at the center of his chest, the nanotech retreated, and then he was handing the module to Tony with a light smile on his face that didn't quite reach the eyes.

Tony took the module, returning the smile with a worried frown, and tapped it again to get it to release. The suit popped out without a struggle. "Hey, why don't you practice a bit without the suit while I work on the heater? You need to know your own strength if the suit is ever damaged in combat."

Peter shifted nervously. "I don't know…isn't it kind of dangerous, just letting me punch things? I don't want to wreck any more of your suits."

"Kid, I built those suits specifically for you to wreck. Go nuts."

But Peter didn't look pleased. He looked worried, which just made Tony worry even more, and then the kid was forcing a smile and turning and going to spar with the automated suits once again.

So Tony worked on the suit, but he kept an eye on Peter the whole time. He watched him strike out, entire body wrought with nervous tension as he tried not to utterly obliterate everything Tony had made for him even though  _that was the point_. It was terrible, watching someone so sweet and so happy shrink away from himself in fear.

_Something's up with him, and it's pretty obvious that it has a lot to do with his new powers. I just need to get him to tell me about it, then we can work through whatever's going on. It'll be okay. I'll_ make _it okay. This time I won't mess up._

Peter yelped in surprise as a particularly strong blow sent a suit careening to the ground, and Tony looked away quickly and pretended he hadn't seen.

"This sucks," Peter whispered, and though his voice was low Tony heard him loud and clear. Then, bolder, "It was working so well when I helped rescue Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes. Why can't I figure it out now?"

"You'll get it," Tony said as comfortingly as he could. "Just keep at it, okay?"

Peter grumbled a response in the affirmative and went back to sparring. Tony worked, Peter fought, and for just a while everything seemed okay.

Tony got the suit's heater running, warmer and more efficient than ever for the cold temperatures of Manitoba. Meanwhile Peter trained, seeming to grow more and more frustrated with controlling his powers, and Tony didn't quite know how to help him. He just sat there worrying and working, until suddenly there was this sickeningly familiar gasp from behind him and he was on his feet in a heartbeat.

Peter's dizzy spells were worrying at best and terrifying at worst. Wakandan scientists (read: Shuri) thought that they were happening as a result of having a foreign substance holding his insides together, and that there was the possibility that they'd either fade eventually or increase in severity, but there wasn't anything that could be done about it until Wakanda figured out how to replace Venom with something more  _human_. Tony's worst fear was that one of the spells would occur during a battle, or that they'd grow so bad that Peter would end up right back in the hospital after only being out of it for a few weeks.

"Hey, woah!" Tony was on his feet in an instant, because he was used to this by now. Peter didn't get the spells terribly often, but he'd had them enough in the past weeks that Tony was familiar with the practice of steadying the kid before he pitched over. "Easy there, kid, you're okay. Shake it off."

Peter groaned, shaking his head and blinking hard to clear the momentary dizziness. It didn't look like a severe attack. Not yet. "Sorry," he mumbled, putting a hand on his head and rubbing as if to stop the world from spinning.

"No need to apologize." Tony dipped his head low, trying to get a good look at Peter's face. "Is it worse this time? Did it happen sooner than the last one? Are they starting to happen more often?"

"No, no!" Peter insisted. He shook his head one last time and looked up, pale but unharmed, and only then did Tony see fit to let go of his shoulder. "It's not any worse, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't any sooner than any of the others."

Tony shot him a suspicious look. "Are you sure? Because if this gets worse we need to be on it immediately; we're not letting it get as bad as it did last time. We don't know if this is just a host rejection thing or if it's something bigger, like Venom coming back or—"

Peter suddenly looked pale again, and Tony kicked himself. He knew how badly the kid feared Venom's return.

"…Hey," he said, a desperate attempt at damage control. "That was dumb. All the best Wakandan scientists think Venom is gone for good, so he is. This is just a little complication with Shuri's miracle cure, that's all, and soon she'll put something together to stop the dizziness and get you back to your former glory. And until then, we've all got your back. Understood?"

He nodded, but he still looked white as a sheet. "Okay, Mr. Stark. I understand."

Tony gave him a suspicious look. "Do you really? Because the last time you were this closed off about something, you collapsed in the middle of training and had to be rushed into intensive care."

"No, no, I promise I understand, and I'm totally fine!" He shivered. "I'm not going to let that happen again. No way."

Tony believed him. He could see the memories cycling through Peter's head, reminding him how bad things could get when he tried to keep secrets. Namely, secrets like being infected by alien creatures.

Tony took a tentative step back to make sure Peter wasn't going to pitch over the instant he got too far away. When he didn't, he took another step back and said, "I'm trusting you with this one, kid. Tell me if something's getting worse."

"Yeah…yeah, of course." Peter swept a hand over his face, pushing his hair back, and shook out his arms in preparation to spring back into sparring. "Have you heard back from Dr. Banner about maybe finding some kind of way to help with the dizzy spells?"

There was hope in his eyes, and Tony hated to kill that hope. But he knew as well as anyone that if Bruce had found something he would have contacted them immediately, because in between working on the purple stone and the strange spaceman and the even stranger gauntlet, he'd been collaborating with Wakanda on trying to help Peter, and nothing had worked yet.

Peter seemed to understand Tony's silence for what it was, and his shoulders slumped. "Oh…maybe he'll figure out something soon, then."

Tony winced. He hated the kid's defeated expression. "Sorry, Pete. We'll get this worked out as soon as possible."

"Yeah." He stepped back into the center of the training mat, and one of the suits powered up in response. "I'm sure we will, Mr. Stark." Then he raised his arms in a defensive stance, the suit moved forward, and he was back to sparring.

And Tony—Tony looked back to the suit, already wondering if there was something he could program in as a failsafe for when the dizziness hit. Maybe he could develop some kind of autopilot, one that Karen could activate if she ever detected Peter undergoing one of his spells. It would be tricky to program, but…he had to try.

He got to work.

 

* * *

 

A few hours later Peter wrapped up his training, powered down the suits, and went to sit beside Tony as he worked on the Iron-Man suit.

These were his favorite moments. Moments where the two of them sat there quietly, Tony working, Peter watching and occasionally lending a hand, no spoken word necessary for them to communicate. When Tony reached out a hand, Peter handed him the exact right tool every time. When he needed an extra hand to hold something in place, Peter was already there.

It was hard to believe that in a few weeks his summer vacation would be over, and then he'd be back to Queens. It was his last year, so Tony had decided to send him back to Midtown with the promise of coming back upstate on weekends. He could easily have taken him out of school and finished up his education privately, but Peter did want to see his friends and finish out high school with everyone else, so he'd opted for living in Queens for just one more year.

Tony reached out, and Peter was already prepared to hand him the heat gun so he could finish off the modifications to the chestplate. He was going to miss this once he went back to Queens. After this last mission, he'd have to go back to taking down smalltime criminals and putting up with Flash's incessant prodding. He'd gotten a bit of a bullying pass after May's death, but he had a feeling things would be right back to normal once he went back for senior year.

Tony put down the heat gun and swept the back of his wrist across his forehead. "Looking good, kid. Want to call it a night?"

Peter glanced up at the clock and saw that it was approaching midnight. Way before when Tony normally went to bed, so he saw right through the scheme. "You have to sleep too, Mr. Stark, and I'll stay up until you do!" Because if he didn't, then Tony would be up until four and then Pepper would get mad and Tony would be exhausted and sleep through the next day, then stay up until four the next night, and it would happen all over again. It was truly a vicious cycle.

Tony looked at him, amused, and leaned back in his chair. "You're onto me, kid. Sure I can't convince you to go rest while I work a while longer?"

"It'll be four in the morning by the time you stop! Drop the suit, or I'm calling Mrs. Potts."

"Woah!" Tony raised his hands in surrender. "That's devious, Pete. You sure you want to go there? If the two of you start conspiring against me I'll never get anything done."

"You'll never sleep if I don't conspire with Mrs. Potts," Peter accused. "Now drop the suit, or else!"

Tony dropped the suit.

The compound was silent as Peter made his way back to his quarters, having said goodnight to Tony a while back. His rooms were pretty close to Tony's by design (they hadn't been before the Venom thing, but Peter knew Tony was nervous about being too far away now), so it didn't take long to get there.

He stepped up to his door.

_"Voice activation required."_

"Peter Parker."

_"Voice activation confirmed. Please proceed."_

The door whisked open, and Peter stepped inside.

His quarters included a bedroom, a bathroom, and a sizable living area that Tony had packed with every entertainment system on the planet. The whole thing was decked out with trinkets and memorabilia that Tony had picked out for him back when he was struggling to figure out how to take care of him following May's death, and he'd thought that he could make everything okay by spending a lot of money on him.

But right now Peter was exhausted, so he didn't have the energy to appreciate any of it as he trudged to the bathroom. His skin was still a little pasty from the dizzy spell, and he tapped at his cheeks to encourage color to return. He felt disgusting after training for so long, sweaty and sticky and disgusting, and he splashed water on his face in a failed attempt to convince himself that he didn't have to shower before bed.

He grumbled irritably and reached for the hem of his shirt, stripping it off and cringing as it stuck to his chest. He didn't like things touching his chest very much, not after Venom. He was always afraid that he would touch the skin there and his fingers would come away black. That was always how it happened in his nightmares.

Peter gave himself the once-over he always did, looking for signs of Venom where there were none. He ran his fingertips down his arms, over his stomach. He turned and checked his back.

Then, finally, he convinced himself to touch at the center of his chest. He had to close his eyes and concentrate to remind himself that the stickiness was from sweat and not from alien goop, had to grind his teeth and take deep breaths to stop from panicking. But he managed it, and nothing was there, and everything was okay. He took one last deep breath, finished undressing, and stepped into the shower.

Within the hour he was in bed and asleep

Except, it wasn't quite that easy.

He had nightmares now. They were growing few and far between, but every once and a while he was hit by these awful, vivid dreams where he was held down and forced to watch as Venom killed his friends, his team, and then turned on him. It had actually been several days since he'd had one of those terrible dreams.

So when it hit him that night, it was fresh and new and awful.

It was more vivid than ever. When Venom put his chilling hands on his shoulders, he felt the surge of nausea and dizziness and fatigue. When he turned his head, he saw Natasha splashed with black goop and Clint backing away, bow held at the ready even as a contaminated Sam tackled and infected him as well. He saw Steve and Bucky standing and watching him with dark, blank stares.

He saw Tony, horrified, backing away from one of Wanda's black, goopy hands, only to go down a few moments later.

The fatigue grew stronger, more dizzying, and Peter's vision spotted in a chokingly familiar way. Drawing breath became more and more difficult, more and more impossible, until he was lying there and gasping and sputtering as the black goop crawled up his chest and over his stomach, covering his face, seeping into his nose and his mouth and down his throat and choking him until all he could see was the deepest shade of black shot through with blood red.

When he jolted awake an indeterminate amount of time later, he was gasping like he was dying. His lungs burned and his head ached and he was just a little bit terrified until he rolled over and got his arms and legs beneath him and realized that it was okay, he was just in bed and everything was fine. He was okay. Everything was okay.

He pushed himself back onto his knees, sitting up and grasping at his face. He was sweating again, heart pounding from the nightmare as he struggled to regain his breath. By the time his lungs stopped burning and his heart stopped pounding, there were tiny rays of light peeking in from the shuttered windows. It had to be sunrise. No one would be awake yet.

Peter sat back and sighed, still shaking a little. His chest felt sticky with sweat again, and it was making him twitch with nervousness.

"Way to go, Parker," he muttered, putting a hand over the center of his shirt and cringing. "Freak out over a little sweat."

He swept his legs over the edge of the bed, getting to his feet. He swayed a bit, the result of the sleepiness lingering at the edges of his mind, but eventually made his way into the bathroom. The lights blinded him momentarily as he flicked them on.

Oh,  _yuck_. He grabbed a towel to wash the grease off his face, but his hair was a lost cause.  _Not much I can do now, but I can at least change my shirt._

He grabbed the bottom of his shirt, tugged up, and—

He froze.

No. No, that was stupid, it was just his eyes tricking him! He was just sweating from his nightmare. There was nothing strange there, nothing unusual beading at the center of his chest just like in his worst nightmare.

But there was.

It wasn't black, so for a moment Peter didn't recognize it. He thought it was just…something else. Something weird, but not something dangerous. But then he touched at the center of his chest and felt it, felt the goopy, disgusting texture of  _Venom_. And it wasn't black, and there wasn't a familiar voice droning in his head, but it was terrifying and reminiscent of the most horrific thing to ever happen to him, and his breath was suddenly stuck in his throat and he felt sick.

There was this moment where he almost thought about hiding it. Where he almost decided to wait and see how this developed, if maybe he was hallucinating and he was totally fine and there  _wasn't_ clear goop seeping from the pores in his chest  _just like_ how Venom had materialized right after he'd been infected. But then the horrors of the past few weeks were flashing through his mind in full color, and he was seeing Tony's terrified face above him as he quite literally died in his mentor's arms, and he knew.

Not this time. Not again.

_"Mr. Stark!"_

 

* * *

 

It all went to hell, then, for a while.

Of course Tony didn't just materialize after Peter called for him, but Karen did call ahead immediately and tell him that something was wrong, so the two met halfway between their rooms and both stared at each other in utter horror for just a split second before they both burst out talking at the same time.

"What is it?" Tony asked frantically. "Karen said there was something wrong and you look half a step away from death, kid, so what is it? What's going on?"

"I don't—Mr. Stark—!"

"Speak up! Are you hurt?" There were hands on his shoulders, then, checking him over, but Peter had put on a shirt so the goop wasn't visible shining on his skin. "Come on, kid…"

Peter was too terrified to speak. So he just tapped at the center of his chest, expression one of pure and utter horror, and Tony must have understood because his face fell like he'd been kicked in the gut.

Tony rushed him down to the lab.

"I've got Bruce on the way," Tony babbled, looking as frantic as Peter felt. "Come on, up on the examination table. And get your shirt off, I need to see what we're working with. Is it bad? Are you hearing him again? Did you have another dizzy spell before it started? Talk to me, kid!"

Peter had to shake himself out of his terror before he could respond, because his vocal chords were locked up and he was shaking, and speaking was impossible. "It's not the same," he managed. "It's not—it's not black, hang on, I'll show you."

When his shirt came off, Tony's expression flickered between confusion and relief, then back to nervousness. "It's clear," he said. "It looks exactly like what we injected you with to hold you together."

"It's seeping out," Peter said, voice shaking just a little. "Just like when Venom infected me, Mr. Stark, it's seeping out of my chest again!"

"It's…" Tony hesitated. "Okay, we can deal with this. Are you hearing him?"

"No, not yet."

"That's good. Now, when did it start?"

"A few minutes before I woke you up. I was having a nightmare about Venom, and then when I got up there was this stuff on my skin. I—I thought about waiting to see if it would go away, but then I remembered last time and I just…"

Tony gave a sharp nod. "It's good that you told me. Even if it's nothing, we need to know about it. I'm sure Bruce will be able to figure out what's going on.

_You said that last time,_ Peter thought, but he didn't say it because he knew it would crush Tony right into the ground. Instead he forced a smile and a nod and said, "I'm sure he will, Mr. Stark."

Tony gave him a tap on the shoulder and said, "Lie back. I'm going to get some of the monitoring equipment hooked up now, before Banner gets here and wants to draw blood and all that good stuff."

_More medical work._ After the past few weeks, Peter would have been happy to never see a needle again.

"Here, you know where these go." Tony passed him a series of sensors, which Peter immediately started sticking to his skin. He'd worn them often enough to have all the positions memorized. Tony affixed the other ends to the monitor, powered everything up, and the next moment Peter was watching as lines began to bob across the screen.

Tony frowned at the numbers next to the moving lines. "Everything looks normal, kid. Then again, last time the monitors didn't start showing abnormalities until you were deteriorating from the inside out."

Oh, boy. Peter really didn't want to think about that.

"But hey," Tony said, trying to cheer him up, "it doesn't look as bad as last time, right? It's clear, not black, and you're just having minor dizzy spells instead of full on collapsing in the middle of training."

Peter shivered. "Yeah…it's probably nothing."

"Probably," Tony agreed. "Now as soon as Bruce gets here…"

There was a frantic clattering from the doorway, right on cue. "I'm here! Tony, what's the emergency? All you said was that Peter—!" Bruce stopped dead, eyes wide as he saw Peter back on that same cot as before with all the same sensors affixed to his skin. "Not Venom?" he whispered.

"We're not sure," Tony said. "No voices, only the usual dizziness, and the stuff is clear instead of black this time."

Bruce stepped closer, already moving past his worry to focus on his work. "That looks like the exact same stuff we injected him with to gel his organs back together."

Peter tried not to cringe as Bruce's gloved hands settled on his chest, pushing and pulling the skin to see how the goop reacted. He hummed and reached over to grab some kind of metal scraper tool, prodding the substance. "Does that hurt?" he asked.

Peter shook his head. "It feels normal, just…sticky."

"Did it hurt last time?"

"Not at first."

"Well that doesn't solve anything." Bruce scraped at the substance, lifting up a portion of the goop and depositing it into a test tube. "I'm going to take another tissue sample, okay? Just like last time, in and out. It'll only pinch a little."

He nodded and raised his head so he didn't have to watch it happened. It was a little humiliating, to know that now his greatest weakness had become needles and small knives. His chest pinched a little, and then Bruce was drawing away and dabbing at a bleeding mark the size of a pinhead.

"Good?" Bruce asked.

Another nod.

Bruce placed the two test tubes off to one side, brows pinched together as he pulled out a syringe to draw blood. That pinched too, but soon enough it was over and Bruce was shining a light in his eyes and checking a few more numbers and then stepping away.

"This is as good as I can do," he said at last. "I'm not much of a medical doctor, so I'll get Dr. Cho on it as soon as possible."

"First thing in the morning," Tony said. "I'll call her right away."

"Good. Peter, I'm going to set up a few alarms that will go off if your vitals rise or dip beyond certain levels. I'll be alerted the instant something goes wrong, so don't worry."

He blinked. "Wait…I'm staying here?"

"Just for the rest of the night," Bruce said. "We don't want to risk this turning into last time, right? This time we'll be extra careful. There'll be a guard in here at all times, and cameras to boot, and we'll be ready to trigger security mechanisms at the first sign that something is wrong. Plus, we know how to get rid of Venom now—if things get too bad, we can do it again."

"High-pitched noises," Tony agreed. "But that's a last case kind of thing, okay? It might not even be necessary this time."

Peter really, really hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

"Do you want restraints?" Bruce asked, but Peter wasn't sure which one of them he was talking to.

Tony shot Peter a concerned look. "I think we'll be okay. Right, Pete?"

He looked down at his hands, unnerved. What if this was Venom, back from the dead? What if he took over again and made Peter hurt people? He'd…he'd  _killed_ people under that monster's control. He couldn't do that again.

"Kid?"

He jolted. "No restraints," he said. Because it wouldn't matter anyway, if Venom was going to take over again. With his strength, he'd tear through any restraints put on him. "It'll be okay. Who…who is staying as the guard?" Who was strong enough to stop him?

…No one. No one was strong enough.

Tony raised a hand. "I've got you, Pete. If you try to do anything weird, I'll make sure no one gets hurt."

It was a comfort, even if Peter knew he was stronger than Tony's best suit.

"Okay," Tony said, looking back to Bruce. "Looks like you can get those samples out of here, doc. I'll take care of the kid."

Bruce gave them an uncertain look, then grabbed the samples and hurried them away. Probably to the lab on the second floor, so he didn't make Peter nervous. He appreciated the sentiment.

Peter waited until they were alone. Then, "Um…Mr. Stark…?"

Tony looked over at him, unaffected. "Yeah, kid?"

"You…you really don't have to do this, if you don't want. You can go back and sleep for the rest of the night and leave someone else to watch me."

"I beg to differ." Tony punched him lightly on the shoulder and smiled, leaning back into a chair beside the cot. "I'll be right here if you freak out. Pepper will understand why I'm not coming back just yet."

And even though Peter could never have asked for such a thing himself, he was grateful.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.


	3. Never Be Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've just finished mapping out this story, and it's looking like it's going to have the exact same number of chapters as the first one. Totally unintentional, and super weird! 
> 
> Thanks for the comments and kudos, and don't hesitate to say something if you're enjoying so far!

When Peter awoke the next morning, he hadn't had anymore nightmares. There was no additional goop on his chest, though the stuff from the night before was still as present as ever, and he felt some of the most overwhelming relief he'd ever experienced. He'd half expected to wake up covered in goop again, under someone else's control and unable to fight it. But he wasn't, and so he sighed and relaxed and closed his eyes again.

"Hey—Peter, I saw that! Don't try to go back to sleep, it's nearly noon."

His eyes snapped open in surprise.

Natasha smiled at him, seeing his confusion. "Tony tapped out around eight; I've been here since. How are you feeling?"

Peter pushed himself up, searching for dizziness or pain or anything else, but there was nothing. "Good, actually," he said. "I guess Tony told you what happened?"

She gave a slow, deliberate nod. "The whole team knows by now. There are a lot of worried faces up there."

"Oh, no…" Peter buried his head in his hands. "Not again!" He'd caused the team enough worry in the past few weeks, and he didn't want to cause even a little bit more. "Will you tell them I'm fine? You know, if you see them before I do."

"Don't want them to worry?" Natasha guessed. Then, when he nodded, "I'll take care of them for you. I can't  _promise_  they won't worry, though, because Steve has been pacing back and forth all morning and I'm not sure anything but a clean bill of health will be able to snap him out of it."

…That didn't make him feel better.

"Well," Natasha said, "nothing weird happened during the night, so I think you're safe to move around during the day. Train, help Tony on his projects, whatever. Just make sure there's always someone else in the room, okay? Dr. Cho wants us to keep an eye on you at all times."

He gave a forlorn nod. Once again he'd become the center of attention, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted. He'd do anything to get better and remove himself from the spotlight.

"Do you know where Mr. Stark is?" he asked.

"He's in his lab, but you're not allowed to go see him until  _after_ Dr. Cho gets a good look at you. She's already on her way, so sit tight for a few minutes."

"And…Dr. Banner didn't say anything about those samples he took, did he?"

Natasha shook her head. "Sorry, but no—though I'm sure Dr. Cho will have some answers for you once she gets here. Hang in there, okay?"

"I will. Thanks, Natasha."

"How many times am I going to have to ask you to call me Nat? Honestly, working you down to Natasha was a chore in and of itself, and now there's another hurdle!"

He blushed. "Um—sorry, Nat!"

She gave him another smile, cupped his cheek momentarily, and stepped away.

When Dr. Cho arrived, it was all needles and bright lights and medical jargon that Peter didn't understand. Natasha stood in the corner, expression one of the highest amusement, as Peter squirmed and protested and asked stupid questions that Dr. Cho didn't even seem to understand. By the time the doctor pulled away, Peter was beet red and eager for it all to stop.

"You seem perfectly healthy," Helen said, confused. "Your vitals have remained consistent and within normal parameters, and I didn't find anything odd in the bloodwork Bruce gave me. It looks exactly the same as it did when you were first injected."

"Then why is it leaking?" Peter asked, because there was no way everything was normal. "It's just… _leaking out_  again, Dr. Cho, what's going on?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Parker, I can't detect anything wrong with you. There's no explanation for why  _that_ —" She waved a hand at his chest— "is happening."

"Then what do we do?" Natasha asked from the opposite wall. She'd taken a few steps forward, arms crossed, expression creased with worry. "Something has to be wrong, Helen, you can't deny that."

"No." She glanced swiftly at his chest again. "I can't. Now—I'll have to run this by Dr. Banner again, and of course I'll need to contact King T'challa for approval, but we may want to move him to Wakanda for further testing."

_Wakanda._ Peter had only been there once, back when he'd nearly died. He knew that Shuri's research had saved his life, and that she could probably do it again. But he had to go back to Queens soon, and going to Wakanda would eat up like a whole week, and did he really have the time for that?

Then again, if he died because he didn't want to miss school then being at Midtown wouldn't matter.

"We'll have to run it by Tony," Natasha was saying when Peter zoned back in. "We might want to bring the Wakandan scientists here if we can, instead of sending Peter there."

Dr. Cho gave a sharp nod. "I'll see to it. Peter, if you feel anything strange you should tell someone at once, but for now I believe you're okay to move freely about the compound."

"Oh—okay, thank you!" He was already moving to get out of bed, popping the sensors off.

"Hang on," Dr. Cho said. She reached behind her, and when she turned back she was handing Peter an array of what looked like cordless sensors. "Keep these on at all times. If they go flat we'll assume you're dead, and no one wants that."

Peter shivered, already affixing the new sensors to his skin. He had no doubt that Tony would have the readout within eyeshot at all times. "Thank you."

"Of course. I'll contact you with further updates as they become available." Dr. Cho put her things away, offered him a polite smile, and then she was gone.

Peter was on his feet in a heartbeat. "I'm going to train or find Tony or—something. Thanks for looking out for me, Natasha—I mean, Nat."

The corners of her lips quirked upward. "You're more than welcome, Peter. But eat first! You're not running off without breakfast, not on that metabolism."

He shot her a joking salute, a smile on his face, and ducked out of the lab.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, Tony? It's time for Vision and me to roll out to take care of that first base."

Tony looked up, startled, to see Clint standing in the doorway to the lab. He hadn't been expecting the intrusion. "Oh—yeah, sure. See you in Germany to take down the head honcho."

"Yeah…" Clint hesitated. "Look, just—if anything happens back here, let us know and we'll come right back."

Tony recognized the words for what they were—an expression of worry, and a promise that if Peter went down again he'd be there within the day. "Thanks, Barton. We'll call you back if anything goes wrong."

Clint nodded, expression grave, and retreated.

That was the first team gone. In another day Steve and Bucky would leave with Sam as a tagalong, and a day or two after that Natasha and Wanda would head for their target. Then, a day after that, Tony and Peter would leave as well. They'd all deal with their respective bases, then move on to secondary targets until eleven of the twelve had been taken out. At that point they would meet up in Germany to take out the last base. The headquarters, as it were. The heart of HYDRA.

Tony just hoped that it all went smoothly. With Peter's dizzy spells and now this thing with his chest oozing again, he wasn't sure how things would go. He was worried that the kid would go down during a mission, and that he would get hurt and that it would be Tony's fault.  _Again._

It was his fault that Peter had come into contact with Venom in the first place. This time, he'd be more careful.

Tony turned his attention back on his project. He was working on a ton different things at the moment, like Peter's suit and his  _own_ suit and Steve's gauntlet, and even the spaceman's glowing purple space rock. It was kind of a lot.

Right now, he was dealing with the mysterious purple stone.

He'd been experimenting with the concept of weaponizing the stone, somehow turning it into something they could use. When he looked at the gauntlet, he thought he could do it. The thing was clearly a containment unit for the chip of yellow stone within, a way of focusing its power into a usable form. If Tony could achieve the same thing and slot the purple stone into place, he could have a method of weaponizing it.

Okay—maybe it was a little too similar to what had led up to the Ultron disaster. But he knew what he was doing this time! He'd do better. He wouldn't nearly destroy the entire world.

Currently he was working on the idea of a suit, specifically designed to harness and utilize the tremendous power of the strange purple stone. It wasn't going too well at the moment—his tech was almost completely melted down every time he tried to slot the stone into place. He was trying to design an arc reactor with space for the stone in the center, so the two could feed into each other and power the suit. Though to be fair, he was having a bit of a hard time with literally every single part of that plan.

He was cursing silently at the arc reactor he was working on, unable to get the wires to tuck into place correctly, when the door opened behind him.

"Tony? Half the lights are off in here, what's wrong with you? You'll destroy your eyes!"

He swung his chair around, a smile automatically finding its way onto his face as Pepper walked into the room. She'd stayed more out of the compound than in it lately, running the company while Tony gallivanted around doing superhero stuff, but now they had a few days before she had to leave again. It was nice, having her in the same building for a change. He always missed her when she left.

Pepper closed the door behind her and began to cross the room. She was carrying a plate of food, probably because she knew he'd blow off the whole  _eating_  thing if she didn't.

"You're bringing me lunch now?" Tony quipped, turning back to his work as Pepper approached. "I thought you said you weren't my babysitter."

She set the plate down on the work table, clearing a spot amidst the clutter. "I wouldn't have said that because I'm not a liar, and we both know I've been running after you for  _years_ trying to stop you from getting yourself killed. If that's not a babysitter, I don't know what is."

"Well at least you've got an assistant now," Tony said with a wink.

She rolled her eyes, amused. "Yes, Peter is very helpful. But he's not here right now, and you need to eat." She nudged the plate closer. "Food now, work later."

"Come on, Pep—I'm close to a breakthrough here, I can feel it! Just give me a few minutes."

_"No,_ Tony. A few minutes will turn into a few hours, and then it'll be midnight and you won't have eaten."

He groaned, but he knew he'd been defeated. He picked up one of the little sandwiches Pepper had brought him, wrinkled his nose at it for a moment, then took a begrudging bite. Then another, because he hadn't realized that  _wow_ , he was really hungry.

Pepper crossed her arms smugly. "See? I told you so."

"Should have known," Tony said around a mini sandwich. "Pepper is always right."

"Yes. Yes I am." She looked over at his work. The purple stone was off to one side in its impenetrable case, and right next to it was a half-melted arc reactor. "Breakthrough, huh?"

"Well, something like that." Tony took the glass of water when she offered it and continued, "I'm trying to work the stone into one of my suits, but it's being finicky."

"I'm sorry—you want  _that_ stone to go in one of  _your_  suits? The stone that Bruce doesn't even want you touching? The one that's equal in power to the Tesseract, that nearly led to New York being turned into a nuclear wasteland?"

He shrugged sheepishly. "That's the one."

Pepper dropped her head into her hands. "Unbelievable. Tony, do you realize how stupid that is? You have no idea what that thing is, or if it's even safe to use. Do you remember Ultron? I wasn't there to stop you then, but I'm here now and this is  _not_  happening."

"But if I could get the stone into a suit, it could work wonders! It would be so powerful; I could wipe out the rest of HYDRA and then move onto every other organization that wants to hurt us!"

"You could also mess up and wreck the entire city and yourself," Pepper said in that no-nonsense voice that never permitted any room to negotiate. "Tony, no."

"But Pep—!"

"Tony.  _No_."

He pouted at her because sometimes that worked, but apparently it didn't when his life was at stake because she just watched him with that same, stony expression and shook her head.

He threw up his hands. "Okay, fine! I won't work the stone into a suit. But Bruce and I  _do_  have to keep experimenting on it. If it's something that can help us, we'll want to use it."

She raised a brow. "You don't think that maybe you should wait until your mysterious guest wakes up? He had the stone when he crashed here; he should know better than anyone if it's safe to experiment on."

"Yeah, but he could also be evil and want to use it to kill us all. It's better if we come to our own conclusions." And of course, the man didn't seem close to waking up. No one could figure out why, but he'd been passed out since he'd crashed a few days prior. There was plenty of brain activity, but Helen wasn't sure when he'd wake up.

Pepper just shook her head. "I don't like it, Tony."

"You don't like any of my hero stuff."

"No, I don't. But this is a part of your life that has to stick around for a while longer, and I get that. Just…promise me that when this HYDRA thing is over, you'll take a break? Go on vacation with me, somewhere far away, and leave the suits at home."

"Hmm," he hummed playfully, "well as much as I'd like to take the vacation of a lifetime with you for an indeterminate amount of time, I promised Peter I'd see him on weekends, and—"

Pepper slapped him lightly on the shoulder, laughing, "Tony Stark, we both know that boy would be miserable if he thought he was keeping you from something. The other Avengers will look out for him while we're gone. Deal?"

He smiled at her. He couldn't help it. "Deal. After we take down the last base, we'll take a nice, long vacation without any hero stuff. And hey, who knows? Maybe soon I'll be able to get this thing out of my chest."

"I'll believe it when I see it," she said with a wink. But a moment later her mood saddened slightly, and there was something in her eyes he didn't like. "And…there is one more thing I wanted to talk to you about."

"Talk away."

"Well, it's nothing severe—it's just that while I was down in the lower floor of the lab, Bruce and Dr. Cho asked me to run something by you. They want to ship Peter to Wakanda for treatment."

He paused. "That would run into the school year. Who knows how long he'll be there, if they can't figure out what's wrong?"

"Well we don't want to send him to Queens like this," Pepper said. "If there's the slightest chance that some piece of Venom is lurking inside him, we can't just ship him off to his senior year and hope for the best. We need a solution."

"Yeah, but  _Wakanda_ …"

She sighed. "I know it's not ideal, flying Peter halfway around the world while the rest of the team is away on the mission to get rid of HYDRA, but we have to do something to take care of him. Though, of course there's the other option—asking the Wakandan scientists to come here to take a look at him. That would mean that they wouldn't have their own equipment to work with, but it could be our best option. Peter has a better chance of receiving treatment before school starts, and he'd be more comfortable in the compound than in Wakanda."

"Yeah…" Tony looked down. "You know, I bet there's some fancy tech they have that can shrink their labs down and re-grow them somewhere else. Maybe they can just transport some equipment with them."

Pepper huffed out a laugh and said, "I'll look into it. In the meantime, do  _not_ keep messing around with that stone. Do you hear me?"

Tony nodded. "Loud and clear."

She shot him a suspicious look. "I'll be watching. Don't do anything I wouldn't."

"Of course not." He held up a hand. "Scout's honor."

"You are  _anything_ but a scout, Tony Stark. Watch yourself."

"Will do, Pep."

She leaned down, pecked him on the cheek, and left.

Tony went back to messing with the stone.

 

* * *

 

Peter tried to avoid sparring with actual people now that controlling his strength was difficult, but Natasha cornered him later that day and dragged him into the training room before he could protest.

It went about as well as usual. They threw light punches (or not so light in Peter's case, though it was a far cry from their first session after the Venom incident, during which Peter had nearly broken her arm), tried to knock each other down, and kept tally of who won each round. Currently Peter had won none, despite his strength, because every time he hurt Natasha he stopped and ran himself in horrified circles until she recovered and put him down with one clean sweep to the ankles.

…Which was where they were currently.

Natasha lashed out with one leg, hooked Peter's ankles out from under him, and he fell.

"Another point to me!" Natasha said, helping him up. "Nothing hurts, right? I didn't damage anything?"

He shook his head, brushing dust off of his suit. He wasn't wearing the mask, but he needed the rest to help with controlling his powers. And…although he'd never say it aloud, wearing the suit helped to quell the panic he felt whenever he tried to fight. "I'm okay," he said. "I heal insanely fast now, remember? Any bruise that would have shown up is already gone."

Natasha stepped back, readying for another round. "And how is the suit feeling? Tony mentioned that you were still having problems with the strength."

"It's okay." Peter flexed his fingers. "It's just weird, like going from being totally human to  _not_ totally human all over again. Like starting over, except this time I understand the stakes."

Natasha sighed sympathetically, lowering her arms. "I understand, Peter. More than you know."

He knew she did. He slid back into a defensive stance and said, "Go again?"

"Of course."

So they did. They sparred again, then again, and again until Peter was slumping against the wall and hissing as his head decided to start spinning.

"I'm good!" he insisted when Natasha tried to help him. "Just another spell, it'll pass…just give it a minute."

Natasha watched him carefully until he looked up, blinking the last of the dizziness from his head. And oh—his chest felt sticky again, which meant that more of that stuff had leaked out, which meant he'd have to go in for more testing.

Natasha's brow furrowed. "Peter, this is alarmingly reminiscent of a few weeks ago."

"No, no!" he said. "It's not as bad, I promise, it's just…" He swayed.

Natasha caught him by the arm. "Okay," she said, "we're going back to the lab. No voices yet, right?"

"No, I'd tell someone if I was hearing things."

"Good. Then let's go."

 

* * *

 

There was nothing wrong with him.

"It looks more whitish this time," Peter mused, rubbing the goop between his fingers. He was panicking on the inside, reliving the worst few weeks of his life, but he wouldn't let anyone catch on. He needed to appear as calm as possible.

Tony just shook his head, tense as ever. "You'll be kept for observation again. We'll see what happens in the morning."

He hesitated. Then, "Mr. Stark, if you're thinking of staying again you really don't have to. I'm fine on my own."

"Nonsense, kid. I've got stuff to work on, and I could use the input. We'll just work from here instead of my lab."

There was nothing he could do to convince him otherwise.

"You know," Tony said, "I've been having issues with this suit I'm working on. Maybe you can help me out."

Peter blinked. "You mean the secret one you sneak off and work on? You'll really let me see it?"

He winked. "Don't tell Pepper and I'll let you take it for a spin once it's ready."

The corners of his lips curved upward before he realized it was happening, and then he was saying, "Okay. I'll help however I can."

Tony knocked a fist into his shoulder, pleased, and went to get the suit.

 

* * *

 

The next day, many things happened.

First, in the earliest hours of the morning, Steve took Bucky and Sam and left for their target. They stopped in to say goodbye to Peter and Tony, who were in the kitchen flipping pancakes for an unusual but welcome attempt at breakfast, before going for their jet and taking off.

"See you in Germany," Steve had said, offering them a salute that was probably way more genuine than anything Peter could have pulled off. "Good luck, kid. And Tony—we'll be in touch."

Then they were gone, Peter and Tony finished breakfast, and they were off to work.

"Why exactly are we cleaning up the lab?" Peter asked curiously, picking up an entire table with one arm and carrying it to the other side of the room.

"Oh, no reason." Tony's expression crinkled with exertion as he tried to push another table across the room. "God, these things are heavy! You're making me look bad, kid."

Peter offered him a goofy smile, lifting the offending table and placing it alongside the others they'd moved so far. "Maybe stick to the equipment and I'll handle the furniture?"

Tony put a hand over his heart in mock hurt. "Are you suggesting I'm weak? I'll have you know I take great offense to that, Pete, I've saved the world like three times!"

"I'm not saying you're weak!" Peter laughed, already moving onto the next few tables. "Come on, Mr. Stark."

He smirked and started moving the equipment.

"So, are you going to answer that question?"

"What question, kid?"

"The one about why we're clearing this room of the lab."

Tony looked down like he was hiding a smile. "We're getting some visitors. Didn't you hear?"

"What?" Peter turned sharply, but Tony wasn't giving anything else away. "Come on, you can't say that and nothing else! What's going on? Who's visiting?"

Again, Tony refused to look at him. "You'll see."

Except he didn't see, not for what felt like a really long time as they finished cleaning up the lab and even went up to have lunch and relax a bit.

And finally, when Peter was approaching madness from the sheer curiosity of it all, it happened.

_"Boss, our guests have arrived. I'm sending them up now."_

Peter's ears pricked up as Tony replied, "Thanks, Friday." Then, to Peter, "Looks like our friends have finally arrived. Took them long enough."

"Who are they?" Peter asked for the hundredth time, buzzing with anticipation.

"Well, it's more who is  _she_ , but—"

The elevator doors dinged, slid open, and then Peter's eyes were going wide as a familiar girl stepped out with a team of Wakandan scientists in tow.

She looked up and spotted them, and immediately she was grinning. "Peter! It's been too long."

And Peter had never been happier.

"Shuri!"


	4. Testing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the support, as always, and I hope you enjoy the chapter! Monday's update might be a little late since I'm moving that day, but I'll do my best to get it out on time.

"Peter!" Shuri exclaimed, a bright smile on her face as she advanced further into the room. "It's so nice to see you, my friend—I thought we wouldn't speak again for ages!"

"Well—yeah, so did I!" Peter took a step forward, stunned. He hadn't seen Shuri since she'd fixed him up back in Wakanda. They'd gotten to know each other in between treatments, and though they hadn't had enough time to become real friends, Peter had missed her after he'd traveled back to the compound. "What are you doing here? Where's your brother?"

"My brother is handling things back in Wakanda, as he should be." Shuri gestured to the team behind her, and they started setting up these silver briefcases everywhere. "As for why I'm here—well, that should be quite obvious. You're experiencing complications as a result of the cure I developed, are you not?"

_Of course_. Why else would she be here instead of back in her own lab?

The rest of Shuri's team was hard at work tapping at the fronts of the briefcases. As Peter watched in awe, they snapped open and expanded into entire lab stations.

"Hey…" Peter pointed at the stations. "How did they…?"

Shuri flashed him a grin. "I told my brother to stop bringing me broken white boys to fix, so he decided to send me to them instead. But of course, what is a scientist without her lab?" She gestured to what had now become fully stocked lab stations. "So of course I had to bring it with me!"

Peter could only stare, stunned, as the rest of the team finished moving the stations around and setting up a beautiful lab like something out of a sci-fi movie. "So you're here to help with Venom?"

"I don't believe it's Venom we're dealing with," Shuri said. "I looked over the scans that were sent to me by Dr. Banner and Dr. Cho, and they appear normal. I believe this is something entirely different."

"Something dangerous?" Peter asked.

"We'll see."

Peter took a nervous step back. "That's, um…not very comforting."

"I know," Shuri said sympathetically. "I'm sorry this is happening to you, but you have my word that I'll find a cause and a solution. If I managed to bring you back from the very brink of death once before, I can do it again."

Tony cleared his throat, and Peter was reminded that he was still there, standing behind him. "We're hoping to avoid the brink of death this time," he said.

Shuri shot him a grave look. "I am hoping for that as well, Stark." Then, to Peter, "I know you're scheduled to leave on a mission on a few days, so I'll do my best to have you better before then. Would you mind staying for immediate testing?'

"No, of course not." If it would fix him up, he thought he'd do anything. He'd had enough of being injured.

"Great," Tony said, taking a step forward. "What do you need from me? I can help with some of the scans, or—"

"You won't be doing a thing!" Shuri exclaimed, raising a hand to cut him off mid-sentence. "This is my lab, and I will work best without you here to distract both Peter and me. Now off with you!"

Tony opened and closed his mouth like a fish, probably not quite sure what to do with a sixteen-year-old girl telling him what to do in his own compound.

Peter offered him a sheepish smile. "See you for training later? Or we can work on one of the suits, if you like."

"Are you trying to bribe me, kid?"

He cringed. "Is it working?"

"Well…" Tony glanced to Shuri, then back to Peter, and the hardness in his expression shifted. "Yeah, it is. But be back in my lab at six o'clock sharp, or else!"

Relief flooded him, and this time his smile was completely genuine. "Of course! I'll see you then, Mr. Stark."

Then Tony was leaving, still somewhat reluctantly, and Peter was left alone with Shuri and the team of scientists who were beginning to pull out what he could only assume was the equipment they were going to use to scan him.

"He's as protective as ever," Shuri remarked drily.

"Yeah, well…I guess it's a side effect of watching someone literally die in your arms."

"Ah…" Shuri winced. "I suppose you have a point. Let's endeavor to make sure that doesn't happen again, shall we?"

Peter nodded, Shuri helped him up onto an examination table, and the team got to work.

Wakandan equipment was kind of amazing, Peter decided for what was probably the hundredth time. Shuri just held this weird device over his chest, pressed a button, and suddenly there was a whole slew of numbers and moving lines being projected in front of them.

"I admit, the scans Dr. Banner sent me have me baffled." Shuri squinted at the projections, reaching out and zooming in on one of the moving lines. "I can't figure out why this reaction is just now occurring. Why not earlier? Why not upon the initial time of injection?"

"Ow, hey!" Peter rubbed his arm, looking behind him to see one of the scientists holding an empty syringe. "What did you just inject me with?"

"Don't worry," Shuri said, "it's just something that will let us get a better look at what's going on inside  _there."_ She jabbed a finger at his chest. There was none of the clear material there now, but Peter could still feel the ghost of it sticking to his skin.

He fidgeted. "Hey, so…if Venom were still in there somewhere, would these tests be able to tell?"

Shuri blinked slowly, considering her answer, then said, "Well, I can't say for sure. But Peter—and I wouldn't say this if I weren't confident in my analysis—I don't believe this is Venom. Not as you knew him."

"How can you tell?" he asked. "What if it is, and he takes over again and this time we can't get him out?"

"Then we find a way to get him out," she said simply. "But it is as I said—I don't believe this is Venom. You aren't hearing voices, and though the dizzy spells are worrying I can't help but think they're a symptom of something else entirely."

"Hopefully not something deadly," Peter muttered.

She shook her head. "Hopefully not."

There were more tests, after that. Shuri stuck him in this weird chamber and did something that gave her some kind of important information, he wasn't sure what, and then ran him through a bunch of other machines until he felt like he was about to drop.

He was just stepping out of what he thought was the last machine before there was this awful burst of sound, and he was on the ground in a heartbeat.

Shuri raised a hand, and the sound stopped. "Sorry," she said as one of the scientists helped him up. "I needed to test if the high-pitched frequencies we used to remove Venom would still work. Evidently they will."

And really, he hadn't been too pleased about that, but then he was being shoved into what really  _was_ the last machine and being told to take a deep breath before all the oxygen was sucked out of the chamber.

It gave him awful flashbacks. But he endured it, held his breath until he thought he was about to black out, and in no time at all he was gasping and being removed from the chamber and laid back on the examination table.

Shuri watched him, sympathetic. "It seems I must apologize again."

"No, no…" Peter held his head, waiting for the world to stop spinning. "I get it, it's necessary and all that. Did you maybe learn anything from all that?"

"Actually, I learned quite a lot." She waved a hand, and the projections shifted again to show a new diagram.

Peter's eyes went wide. That…was a diagram of his entire body. And it was covered in red splotches.

"Don't be alarmed," Shuri said, seeing his impending panic. "It may not be as bad as it looks. See, the red is where the scans have picked up traces of the contagion. I'm afraid there's no way to put this gently, but…it appears to be spreading from the initial site of injection."

There was suddenly a lump in Peter's throat, and he swallowed hard around it. "How is that not as bad as it looks?"

"Because we don't know the nature of the contagion. As you know, you were injected with a benign version of the substance Venom was composed of in order to save your life. Up until this point it was believed to be dormant. It wasn't self-replicating, and it wasn't attempting to further break down and replace your internal organs. Now, though…well, we're not sure yet. Further testing and analysis will have to be done before we can say for sure whether or not the contagion has become hostile."

"Oh." He took deep breaths, but that didn't stop the panic from building. "Okay. Okay, I can—I can deal with that, I'll be okay. I'll do more tests."

Shuri gave him a calm, self-assured look. "It's going to be okay, Peter. You aren't hearing voices, and you aren't deteriorating like you were when you were initially infected by Venom. We'll figure out what's going on. The probes I injected into your bloodstream will keep a constant watch on your considion, amidst other things, and in a day or two we should have a better idea of how the contagion is affecting your body. Please, go about your daily routine as if nothing were wrong. And of course, the instant the substance begins to emerge once again, come to me at once so I can take a fresh sample."

He gave a shaky nod. "Of course. I can do that."

"Excellent. Until then, we'll be watching to make sure nothing goes wrong."

 

* * *

 

_I've almost got it._

Tony narrowed his eyes at the arc reactor on the table in front of him. He was on the edge of a breakthrough, he could feel it. The purple stone was glowing from inside its protective chamber, taunting him, and he was going to  _make_ it bend to his will. He was going to slot it into place inside the arc reactor, and then he would power a suit with it. It would be unstoppable.

…But maybe he was getting ahead of himself.

In the corner of the lab, Peter hissed in exasperation as he accidentally demolished another one of the automated suits. He was still struggling with the new powers, but now he had even more serious things to worry about. He seemed distracted and uneasy, and Tony's heart ached for him, but he knew there was nothing he could do.

Shuri had told him about the results of the initial scans. She'd told him that the contagion was spreading again, leeching into Peter's bloodstream and making itself at home. She'd also told him that she couldn't yet tell if the contagion had become hostile once again, and that they wouldn't know for sure until they examined the results a little closer.

"I can't say for sure whether or not this is the return of Venom," she'd told him in a low tone. "But it's worth mentioning that Peter isn't hearing voices, and that he's not experiencing anything more severe than the occasional dizzy spell. If it is a resurgence—and I don't believe it is—it's not nearly as severe as the initial infection."

It was a little comforting, but not very. Peter's future was very much unknown.

Tony kept working. Or at least, he kept working until there was a startled yelp from behind him, and he whipped around in alarm.

It happened fast. There was a split second where one of the automated suits had its hand up, repulsors at the ready and aimed straight at Peter's head. It wouldn't be deadly, not on training settings, but it would at least knock the kid out and he knew it. Peter threw himself to the ground, lashed out, and the suit went down.

"Woah there!" Tony got to his feet to help Peter up, but he was already staggering back into a ready position. "You okay there, kid?"

Peter nodded. "Sorry, Mr. Stark, it…it got the better of me! I guess I'm a little distracted, and—oh."

Tony didn't need to ask why the kid's expression had just fallen, because he saw it. He saw the dark, sticky patch on the front of his shirt, and he understood.

"Okay," he said. "Time to get Shuri."

They got Shuri.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Wanda and Natasha left.

"Be careful," Natasha said, putting both hands on Peter's shoulders and looking him in the eye. "You're a good kid, Peter, and you're sure as hell not going out without a fight. Be here when we get back."

He'd nodded, Wanda and Natasha had said finished up their farewells, and then the two had turned and gone. With them no longer there, Peter and Tony were alone in the base. Save for Shuri, of course, and her team of scientists—but they spent most of their time in the lab, so he didn't see them much outside of testing.

Peter had three days before he had to take off for the mission. In that time, he went about his usual routine and hoped Shuri would come up with something. But as time passed and there wasn't a peep from the lab, Peter became more and more convinced that there was nothing they could do, and that the goop was going to turn evil and take over his mind and make him do horrible things like last time.

Tony helped distract him. Whenever he started to zone out thinking about all the things that might happen, he swooped in and came up with something to keep them occupied. Sometimes it was a movie, other times a card game, and other times still it was something like sparring or working on a suit.

"Venom be damned," Tony said, "if you're going on this mission then you have to do your best to learn how to use the new suit. I know you're having problems, but with practice I'm sure you can push through. You've got good instincts, Pete, so use them!"

But that was hard, when his instincts were still wired around  _his_  powers instead of Venom's.

Finally, as the third day drew to a close and there was only one night of sleep separating Peter from his mission, Shuri met them up in the kitchen for an update.

They hadn't been expecting her. One moment Peter was scraping a failed attempt at dinner into the trash, Tony riffling through his phone for a good pizza place, and the next Shuri was stepping in with an unreadable expression on her face.

"Shuri," Peter said, surprised. "What are you doing up here?"

"You  _are_  about to leave on a mission, are you not? I thought you might want to know where you stand before that happens."

Tony nodded and said, "I was going to go see you about that after we ate. So what's the word? Is the kid cleared to go on a mission?"

Shuri gave a helpless shake of the head. "I'm afraid I have no solid answers for you yet, Stark. Three days is no time with which to collect all the data I need for a diagnosis. However, it is as I said before—I believe Venom is gone. The contagion has none of the telltale signs of Venom's consciousness as they did before."

"Are you talking about the whole  _body versus the mind_  thing again?" Peter asked.

"Yes, exactly. When we severed Venom's consciousness from his body, we were left with the contagion that we injected you with. Looking at the samples we've taken, it does not appear as if that consciousness has returned. All that's happening is that Venom's  _body—_ the substance that now holds your organs together—is leaking back through the skin. Now, the  _why_ of it all…that is the real question."

"And the dizzy spells?" Tony asked. "And the light-headedness, and the inability to control his own strength?"

Once again, Shuri shook her head. "I have no answers. All I can say is that Venom's return is highly unlikely. In addition, Peter has not experienced a dizzy spell in a few days—and though he has excreted more of the substance in the past twenty-four hours, for the moment it seems entirely docile."

"In other words…?"

"He's not in the clear," Shuri said. "But I do believe that he will be more than safe to go on this mission with you."

Peter looked up, hopeful. It wasn't a clean bill of health, but it was a start. If Shuri didn't think Venom was back, he was inclined to believe her.

But then again, she had no idea about the dizziness or the actual cause for the contagion beginning to seep through his skin.

She…she could be  _wrong_.

"We don't want to take any chances," Tony said, as if reading Peter's mind. "I need you to be sure."

"I  _can't_ be sure," Shuri said, exasperated. "I'm working on a cause and a cure, but I need more time!"

"Well if you can't be sure, then maybe the kid shouldn't—"

"No!" Peter yelped, because he knew where Tony was going and he didn't like it. "I want to go on the mission, Mr. Stark! Please, I—I don't want to sit here doing nothing anymore, it's going to drive me insane!" Or more accurately, he didn't want to feel  _useless_  anymore. He was tired of being the one everyone watched nervously, because they thought he was going to drop dead at any moment. And now there was this thing with his strength, and not being able to use his new suit correctly, and of course the thing about maybe being contaminated again, and…well…he just wanted to feel  _strong_  again. He wanted to feel in control, and he wanted the  _others_  to feel like he was in control, and that they didn't have to waste their time looking after him.

If he did this mission and did it well, he stood a chance at that.

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Are you sure you're up to this? No one wants a repeat of last time."

" _Last time_  was actually when I helped rescue Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes! Come on, Mr. Stark, I can do this. The worst that happens is that I get a little dizzy!"

Tony hesitated. "And I  _have_ been working on that autopilot function to help with that…"

"Yeah, see? It'll be fine! I promise I'll do the best I can, and we'll take down the base together!"

"Well…" Tony pinched at the bridge of his nose, radiating uncertainty. "I guess there's not much of a choice at this point. We're the only two left, with Rhodey still out of commission, and I can't take that base alone. Just—if anything goes wrong, if you start to have even the  _slightest_  inkling that you're going to have a dizzy spell, you tell me.  _Immediately_."

Peter nodded vigorously. "I will." And he really would, too. He was done trying to hide things.

"We don't have long until you have to go back to Queens," Tony said. "Let's make this time count."

So they did their best.

There was just that one last night until they had to leave, and in that time Peter tried just one last time to get his suit to work. This time Shuri was there, offering to watch him so Tony could go work on that mystery suit he wouldn't tell Peter about.

It went the same as it always did. Peter started up the training sequence, ducked around a few punches, threw a few of his own, and tried to get the suit working right. When he punched too hard, a flip of the switch from Karen sucked up the excess power. But when he tried to release it, he did it at the wrong time and used too much and accidently ripped right through his opponent.

He groaned, dropping his head into his hands. He was sick of being unable to control his powers.

Shuri watched him with a frown. "That suit…it is not what you need."

"What?" He looked up. "Mr. Stark made this suit just for this purpose! It's kind of like your brother's suit, except a little different because it's storing my own power instead of drawing it from other people who are trying to hit me."

She frowned, circling him and running a fingertip down the metal webbing on his arms. "How does it work? I mean, how does it decide how much of your power to store away to be released at a later date?"

"It—well…" He hesitated, unsure. "I'm not sure how Mr. Stark programmed it. I can just kind of set it to certain power levels, and if a hit I deliver is going to be above that power level, then it takes the excess energy and stores it. Then I can use it later to deliver a punch with like,  _really_  inhuman strength."

"But it's not working."

"…No. It's not."

Shuri narrowed her eyes. "Show me again."

He blinked, nodded, and raised a hand for the next automated suit to attack. This one ended the same way.

She shook her head as if her worst suspicions had been confirmed. "Unbelievable. That suit—it's so  _choppy._ "

"Hey!" he yelped. "This is some of Mr. Stark's best work! The suit is fine, it's me that's the problem!"

"Blaming the equipment instead of the operator is indeed a mark of cowardice under normal circumstances," Shuri said, "but these aren't normal circumstances. Peter, that suit is probably doing more harm than good."

"But—but it's Mr. Stark's best work!"

"You said that, but I don't believe it."

"It's…!" He trailed off, waving his arms in frustration. "It's helping, okay? It's helping when nothing else can! Just because I don't have a good handle on it yet doesn't mean it's not a good suit!"

"No, no—for the tech Stark is dealing with, the suit is impressive. It's just that he doesn't have access to the  _best_  technology. You don't need an inhibitor, Peter, you need a  _catalyst_. Something to bring you to your full potential so that you can understand it,  _learn_  from it."

He shook his head and said, "I've seen my full potential, thanks, and I don't like it very much."

"No, you  _haven't_." Shuri sighed. "Okay, look at it this way—when you were first given your powers, you probably had to spend a while getting used to it. You took a few days, or even a few weeks, where you tried to understand your new limits. Once you came to understand them, you were able to go about your life as you always had because you knew precisely what percentage of that power you had to use to have the intended effect. Once you understood your one hundred percent, you knew you only had to use  _five_  percent to open the door without shattering it."

"Well…yeah?"

"Except now you have this suit," Shuri went on. "You have a suit that, when you punch, takes excess energy and stores it rather than letting you feel the full force of what you're doing. So if you have the suit set to a lower power level and you lash out, it doesn't let you experience the full power of that strike and you begin to think that when you punch that hard, that's the power you're going to achieve—but that's not true. Because the instant the suit comes off and you punch that hard, you're going to do some serious damage because there's nothing there to filter it down to a lower power level.

"I…um, what…?"

She snorted. "If you have the suit set to put out five percent power and you punch at fifty percent, it's going to filter it down to five. So if you take the suit off and punch at fifty percent again, you'll be expecting something to lower your power to five percent once again. But there will be nothing there, and you'll do more damage than you mean to do. In other words, the suit is doing more harm than good. It's feeding you inconsistencies about your true strength."

He took a moment to let that sink in. If that was true, then all he'd been doing this whole time was making things worse. Tony's suit…it was  _hurting_  him. And he'd been wearing it next to constantly.

Shuri reached out, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You need to discover your new one hundred percent," she said. "Once you've done that, you won't need a suit. It will be just like before, when you first got your powers."

"But…Mr. Stark is going to wonder why I'm not wearing the new suit, and I don't want to disappoint him! He'll be crushed if he finds out it was hurting me instead of helping me."

"Then he will begin again, and this time he will find something to help bring out your strengths rather than dampen them." Shuri smiled at him, bright and confident, and some of the fear in Peter's chest bubbled away. "Please trust me on this, Peter. The technique of using a suit to absorb power works perfectly when it goes in one direction, but in the other…" She shook her head. "Not so much. So for this coming mission, I would ask that you leave the suit behind."

"I…guess if you think it's best…" Peter looked down at his hands, at the vibranium mesh that was meant to help him control his powers. "I don't want to leave the whole suit just yet, but…Karen, will you turn off the power absorption protocol?"

_"Of course, Peter. Right away."_

The slight glow behind the webbing faded, and Peter was left with a suit stripped of its main purpose. "You really think this is going to work?" he asked.

Shuri flashed him a grin. "I know it. Here, begin practicing now."

He eyed the next suit. "I'll destroy it."

"You have to, Peter. Otherwise you'll never know that you can."

"Well…okay, here it goes!" He threw a punch, the suit crumpled, and he winced. "Oh, no…"

"No, no, this is good!" Shuri clapped her hands excitedly. "See, now we can move onto something more difficult to break! Once we find your threshold, you will understand the very peak of your abilities. From there, you'll be able to work on the rest!"

He was reminded of being put through a similar exercise with Tony all that time ago, where he'd tried to figure out his limits by striking metal blocks. He'd stopped the tests before he fully acclimated to his powers, but if Shuri was right, he just needed to keep at it.

Peter took a deep breath and said, "I guess if you're certain, then…let's keep working! Did you have any ideas about what I should try to break next?"

"Oh, I think I might have something."

She led him out of the room, and they began.

 

* * *

 

The next morning Tony awoke early to finish what he could on his latest suit. The purple stone was still a bit finicky, but he thought he'd gotten at least a somewhat stable version of the suit online. He hadn't dared to put it on without further testing, but at least it was there and running.

As the sun crept higher above the horizon, Tony finished up. He linked the suit to the protocol that would let him call it from anywhere in the world, just in case something serious happened, and then he wiped his brow, stepped back, and headed out of the lab.

He was just lucky that Bruce had focused his attention more on the gauntlet as of late, and that the purple stone wouldn't be missed while he was performing his research. Not yet.

By the time Tony got up to the main living area, Peter and Shuri were there saying their farewells.

"You'll be safe," Shuri was saying when he walked in. "Remember what we discussed last night. You aren't the suit, you're  _you_ —so use the power you've been given."

Peter nodded, a comically serious look on his face, and straightened up. "I've got this," he said, sounding like he was attempting to convince himself more than anyone else.

"Yes," Shuri said, "you do. Now off with you, your mentor has arrived!"

Peter whipped around at the speed of light. "Mr. Stark! Is it time to go?"

"As long as there haven't been any dizzy spells or anything else I should know about." He stepped further into the room and paused. Something seemed different. Peter looked a little tired, but he also looked happier than Tony had seen him in weeks. Like whatever demons he'd been battling as of late, he'd won his first fight.

Peter bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "Nothing new, Mr. Stark! I'm ready to go kick HYDRA's butt!"

He couldn't help a smile, reaching out to ruffle the kid's hair. "I know you are." Then, to Shuri, "Contact me if anything changes. We'll be in touch."

"Of course." She stepped away with a respectful nod. "I'll see you two soon enough."

Peter nodded back, then turned to Tony excitedly. "Come on, let's go! I've been dying to get out of the compound."

"Me too, kid." He walked with Peter out of the living quarters, leaving Shuri behind as they went to the airfield. The jet was already waiting, an automated pilot ready to take them up to Manitoba. From there they'd hit a base not too far away, then fly straight to Germany to confront the big bad.

After that, HYDRA would be gone forever.

They boarded the jet, and they were off.


	5. Blood and Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geez, I am EXHAUSTED after moving into my new place today, but I just can't bring myself to push the update until tomorrow! So enjoy, and as always don't hesitate to leave feedback!

The jet flew over Manitoba, bearing Peter and Tony to their destination with deadly efficiency. They'd made one stop to refuel already, but now they were nearing the drop point.

"Remember the plan," Tony said, looking out the window as they approached. "Drop down, lure them out, hit them hard. It shouldn't be too difficult."

Peter gave a quick nod. He was a little nervous about going into battle when he had no solid answers about what was happening to him, but he knew that this was his chance to prove himself to Tony. It was his chance to make him forget about the trauma of the past two weeks and realize that Peter was still a strong, capable fighter.

He wasn't going to mess this up.

"Have you heard from the others?" Peter asked, trying to distract himself.

Tony shrugged. "I got word from Clint and Vision this morning saying they'd taken down their first base and were moving onto the second, but everyone else is still quiet. I'm assuming they're not through with their bases just yet."

"Oh." Peter shuffled his feet, going back to staring out the window. On the other side of the cabin, Tony was getting up and calling his suit from the back room of the plane. It appeared a moment later, landing in front of him and opening in preparation for the attack.

"You'd better suit up, kid." Tony stepped into his suit, and it closed around him in a matter of moments. He'd had to get very good at suiting up in the blink of an eye to prevent himself from being killed, Peter had a feeling.

Peter took a deep breath and got to his feet. The module had been in his hands for some time, and he reached up and pressed it to his chest. The nanotechnology crept across his skin, locked tight around him, and he was ready to go. The mask sealed over his face and hid his anxious expression from sight.

"We'll reach the drop zone in thirty," Tony said, approaching the doors and wrenching them open. Wind roared through the cabin, and Peter shivered before remembering to have Karen turn on the heater. Snow was raining down, washing everything with bright white particles, and some of it was already whirling into the cabin and sticking to Peter's suit.

"Ten seconds," Tony said through the coms, now that it was too loud to speak normally. "Is your parachute online?"

"You're asking me that now?" Peter joked weakly, checking again to make sure everything was in order. "All green lights on my end."

"Good. Make sure it stays that way."

Then time was up, and Tony's repulsors were firing as he stepped out of the plane and down into the snowstorm below, and Peter was left to leap after him into the unknown.

He'd never actually leapt from a plane into a snowstorm before, and it was freezing and exhilarating and a little terrifying. He couldn't even see the ground as he plunged toward it, the only sign of Tony being the bright blue lights on the soles of his boots and the palms of his hands.

_"Deploying parachute,"_ Karen said.  _"In five, four, three, two…"_

Peter yelped as the parachute whipped up into the sky, catching him with a jolt. The wind pushed him around a bit, but before he knew it he could see the faintest outlines of pine trees coming into sight, and his feet were crunching into the snow. On the ground the visibility was a bit better, and he looked up to see Tony landing beside him.

"That should have tripped HYDRA's sensors," he said calmly, looking around. "I'm not sure where the entrance is exactly, but they should make themselves known soon enough."

Peter clicked the buckles of the parachute, letting it fall to the ground. Looking around, he saw they were in a great pine forest with a beautiful dusting of snow everywhere around them. It hadn't been snowing for too long, but it was enough to make moving a little more difficult than he wanted it to be. Tony was so lucky he could  _fly_.

"Come on," Tony muttered, aiming his repulsors in a steady arc around them. "Where are these assholes?"

Peter took a tentative step forward, feeling the snow crunch underfoot as he looked around. What was it with HYDRA and forests? They really seemed to like forests. Not that he was complaining; it was way easier to avoid civilian casualties when they were out in the middle of nowhere.

There was a metallic click from not too far away, and the hair on the back of Peter's neck prickled.

"Mr. Stark, get down!"

Tony didn't question him, throwing himself down without a second thought as he'd learned to do whenever Peter's senses went off. A moment later Peter spotted the grenade, shooting an arm out and catching it with a well-placed web. A quick turn lobbed the thing back at the enemy, and the explosion lit up the snowy forest with a bright flash of heat.

Tony was on his feet in a heartbeat, hands out, firing in the direction the grenade had come from. "Good eye, kid!"

Peter nodded jerkily and slung himself up into the trees, perching on a branch to see if he could spot the enemy. Even with his enhanced senses, it took longer than it should have to see the flashes of movement and white uniforms. White, to match the snow. They were trying to blend in.

"Mr. Stark, they're trying to surround us!"

"Then don't let them!"

Peter took a second to plan, then dropped out of the tree like a stone. A quick roll caught him on the ground, and when he came up he was already prepared for the gunfire. There were three agents in front of him, and he charged without thinking.

_Okay,_ he thought,  _Shuri said to not use the strength-altering functions of the suit, so…here we go!_

The first goon whipped his gun up and tried to shoot Peter at point blank, but he was prepared. He raised a hand and sealed it over the muzzle of the gun, the vibranium mesh catching the bullet. A squeeze crushed the weapon beyond use, and then Peter was sweeping the man's legs out from under him and webbing his hands to the ground. Except apparently that didn't work too well in the snow, because when he tugged once the webbing came right up.

"Oh—okay then, let's try this!"

The other two closed in from behind as the first continued to writhe on the ground, the webbing gluing his fingers together. Peter launched himself straight up, kicking one in the chest, smashing his knee into the other's skull on the way down. A gun fired uselessly into the ground, and he stepped on it to make sure it wouldn't accidently shoot someone. But he winced, then, as he'd heard the crack of bone and the crunch of crumpling metal when he'd done it, and he was reminded of the fact that he still couldn't fight normally. He refused to kill these people, even if they were evil. That wasn't his way.

Peter made short work of the downed goons, webbing them this time to a tree rather than the ground. Turning, he saw Tony fighting against another group.

Tony saw him looking, and raised a hand to point toward the entrance of the base. Peter couldn't see it, but he knew it had to be there because that was where the goons had come from. He gave a thumbs up, which made Tony snort in amusement into the coms, and then he was moving.

"Karen, activate web grenades!"

_"Acknowledged."_

Peter flung out an arm, and two bursts of web exploded from his shooters. One hit two tree trunks, spreading out and catching a man who was sprinting right for Tony, and the other enveloped another goon from waist to throat and stopped him from firing his weapon point blank in Peter's direction. He saw another set going for Tony out of the corner of his eye, and without thinking he turned and struck the trunk of the closest tree with all his strength. It cracked, splintered, and crashed down right in their path.

_Woah—too close! Come on, idiot, you have to be careful! You can't let anyone die._

"Annoying insect!" one of the trapped goons hissed, backing away from the fallen tree and targeting Peter instead. There was a knife in each hand, and he came at Peter like a whirlwind.

"Hey, there! Come on, man, don't damage the new suit!" Peter flipped back, hissing as one of the blades managed to catch him in the forearm. Not deep, but it would sting until his healing factor took care of it. His other arm was already raised to catch the next strike, his vibranium-enforced gloves closing around the blade and wrenching it out of the goon's hand. He threw it to the ground and swept his leg out in an attempt to trip the man, but he jumped and actually managed to get a hand hooked around Peter's arm.

_Ouch!_ Peter yelped as he was thrown to the ground, rolling fast to avoid being stomped on. A flick of the wrist webbed the man's legs together.

More gunfire rang out.

Peter moved without thinking, rolling out of the way as he spotted the guns aimed at his head. There were two more men taking cover behind the fallen tree, firing on him with abandon, and he zeroed in on them.

"I've got it, kid!"

Peter looked up in surprise as Tony flew overhead, firing twice and flooring the men.

"No need to thank me," Tony said cockily, landing beside him. "Come on, let's move for that base."

They made for where the goons had emerged, searching for some kind of hatch in the ground or some kind of base aboveground. As it turned out, this time they were dealing with the latter.

"I see it!" Peter called above the wind, pointing at the dark shape coming into view. "Mr. Stark, it's there!"

"I see it." Tony lifted off, and immediately bullets whizzed by his head and clanked into his suit. "And they see me. Perfect."

Peter was already moving, slinging into a tree and moving toward the base. He could see a few guards on the watchtowers, no doubt calling for reinforcements.

Tony drew to a halt outside the base, hands up, picking off the guards that were too stupid to find cover. On the ground, tanks were beginning to roll out. "Kid, a little help with those?"

"Of course, Mr. Stark!"

Peter dropped down onto one of the tanks with a fearlessness that only came with experience. The metal was too thick to get through with his suit, but—

Oh,  _right_ —his strength. Of course!

Peter leapt out onto the tank's muzzle, swinging around it like a training bar and landing himself firmly in front of it. He heard Tony let out something like a squawk in alarm, but Peter ducked beneath the muzzle long before he could be stricken. He aimed his shoulder into the metal and dug his heels in as the tank hit him, hands out to receive some of the force. His fingers sank into the thing like it was made of soft plastic. He heaved once, gasping, and the entire tank tipped over and crashed to the ground.

"Jesus, kid," Tony whistled. "Remind me to never,  _ever_  get on your bad side."

He smiled, a bit breathless. "If you make the tanks out of vibranium, you have nothing to worry about."

Tony's mask hid his face, but Peter thought he could hear the smile in his voice. "Let's hope it never goes that far. I've fought you exactly three times too many as it is."

That stung a little, but Peter put it aside and focused on the battle. Tony was firing on one of the two remaining tanks, but his blasts weren't enough to get through the thick metal. The tanks returned fire, and Peter had to scramble to avoid being demolished. His healing abilities were insane since gaining Venom's powers, but he didn't want to test them like  _that_.

That was when there was more gunfire from above, as more gunmen appeared to defend the base. "Hey," Peter said, ducking underneath the muzzle of the second tank and trying to perform the same maneuver until he was shot at from above. "Do you think that maybe two people to take out an entire base was a bit stupid?"

"Are you calling me stupid, kid?"

"What—no, Mr. Stark—!"

He snorted. "It was a joke. And no, it's definitely not stupid. See?"

Tony swept low and chucked something under the tank Peter was trying to topple, and a moment later the entire thing sparked and wheezed and went dead. The hatch popped open, troops flowed out, and Peter was immediately ducking and weaving and webbing them into a massive amalgamation of arms and legs.

Tony turned his attention to the gunmen on the top of the watchtowers, and Peter went for that last tank. He landed atop it, using his strength to swivel the barrel, and when it fired, it did so directly into its own base. Stone crumbled, people yelled in alarm, and Peter's heart pounded in his ears as he flipped backward off the thing and crushed a fist into its tread. Mobility crippled, he sealed the hatch shut with a web grenade and swung up and away from the wreckage.

_Ha—_ using his full strength like  _this_  was exhilarating! On machines, there was no reason to hold back.

…Hey. Maybe Shuri had a point.

"Kid, there's another group incoming!"

Peter's head shot up, and he held his hands at the ready. Another group of seven gunmen appeared, weapons raised, and Peter and Tony went into action.

When the men went down, no others came to meet them.

"Is that it?" Peter asked, taking a moment to regain his breath.

"There are probably some inside," Tony said. "Come on, let's clear this place out. I already have S.H.I.E.L.D. on the line to pick these idiots up."

Peter followed Tony up to the gates of the base. A repulsor beam cracked them open, and they were free to walk right up to the main doors and blow those open, too.

"Let's stick close and be careful," Tony said, tense, and Peter knew he was remembering the last time they'd tried to take out a HYDRA base together. The time that had ended in his contamination.

The base was cold and dark, and Peter was surprised to see no more troops waiting inside. He hadn't taken care of many bases in the past, but he knew that there were supposed to be more troops than  _this._

Tony seemed to be of the same mind. "What the hell?" he grumbled as they stuck their heads into room after room and found nothing. "Where are the rest of them?"

Peter tried to listen with his enhanced hearing, but picked up on nothing. His senses were prickling with unease, though. He knew something was wrong.

"Hey…Mr. Stark? I think something might be going on."

"Your senses?"

"Yeah. I just—I feel  _weird_."

Tony stopped. "Not a dizzy spell? Or…anything worse?"

"No," Peter said quickly, needing to derail that train of thought before it left the station. "It's nothing like that, I promise! I just feel like we're missing something here."

Tony raised his chin. "Then let's find it."

They kept searching. But even the laboratory held no answers, and so the two of them were left making their way back to the surface. The tension in the air was thick.

"Stay on guard," Tony murmured, as if Peter wasn't already doing just that. "We have no idea what could be waiting for us."

They reached the exit and stepped back out into the frigid air.

Peter's hair stood on end, but he couldn't see the cause. "Mr. Stark, my senses are going crazy! There's something dangerous out here."

Tony scanned the forest. "Stay behind me."

_That's not going to help if they approach from behind._ But Peter still did as he was told, keeping back a few steps as Tony moved out into the center of the clearing around the base. There wasn't a hint of movement anywhere around them.

"Well I don't know where the danger is, Pete, because it looks pretty barren out here." Tony lowered his arms. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is already on their way out here. Let's patrol the area and—"

The world erupted into a firestorm.

Peter's world flipped on edge as he was thrown like a ragdoll, a massive shockwave chucking him into the side of one of the felled tanks. His head cracked the metal, suit cushioning some but not all of the blow, and the next moment he was on the ground gasping for breath.

When Tony wasn't immediately at his side, panicking and demanding to know if he was okay, Peter knew that he was down as well. But when he tried to raise his head he was floored by nausea, so he could do nothing but curl on his side and wait for the shock to fade.

There were footsteps. More of them than Peter knew what to do with. And above them, the roar of engines as some kind of aircraft dipped close to the ground.

Then, there were hands on his shoulders. Harsh hands, gripping tight and hauling him forward and forcing him down on his knees. The muzzle of a gun settled at the back of his neck.

_"Peter,"_ Karen said,  _"are you okay?"_

He didn't respond. His vision was just starting to clear, and he was quickly realizing that he was entirely surrounded. Dozens and dozens of HYDRA agents were lining the edges of the clearing, guns trained directly on him—and in the air above, a small craft with its canons leveled at Peter's chest.

Karen sounded worried.  _"Would you like me to engage autopilot? You don't seem to be responding, and if you stay where you are I fear you will be killed."_

Peter's advanced healing was grappling with the effects of the blast. Things were coming back online, but it wasn't happening fast enough. And where was Tony? Was he okay? The blast hadn't  _killed_  him, right?

At the front of the throng, a man stepped forward that Peter didn't recognize. "We weren't expecting visitors," he said, voice low and gruff and thick with a German accent. "Let alone members of the  _Avengers_. What a perfect opportunity to get rid of a few pests."

_"Peter!"_ Karen snapped.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Curling his fingers was a little easier, though, and strength was slowly trickling back into him. He raised his head and finally got a good look at his surroundings.

Tony was standing in the center of the clearing, and even from behind the suit he looked tense. His hands were out as if to fight, but they were completely surrounded—and oh, yeah, there was a gun pressed to the back of Peter's neck. His hands were covered with vibranium mesh, but wouldn't provide much protection against  _this_. A direct shot to the throat would kill him.

The man—presumably the leader of this particular base—narrowed his eyes. "Tony Stark. Stand down, or we'll kill your brat."

The situation clicked, and Peter understood.  _No. Not again. I'm not going to let them use me as a bargaining chip._

He clicked off external coms and whispered, "Karen, what can I do?"

_"You're outnumbered, and your suit won't block a bullet to the neck. If you try to remove yourself from the situation, it's likely that all of these men will fire on you. Tony will be protected by his suit, but you will not."_

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Karen hesitated.  _"I'm not sure."_

Peter clenched his jaw.  _Fine. I'll do it myself._ "Mr. Stark?"

When his voice didn't reach the outside world, he knew that Tony had flipped his coms to internal use only. They were safe to communicate for a moment before anyone realized what was happening.

"Kid?" Tony whispered.

"I—I can handle this, okay, so don't worry about me. I won't let him kill me."

"That's not very comforting," was the cool response.

"Please, trust me! I'm going to use the vibranium mesh in my gloves to stop the bullet. I'll reach around and grab the muzzle before this guy can shoot me."

"And then the entire rest of the clearing will fire at you, and your suit isn't bulletproof." Tony swore. "Remind me to make that modification, will you? It won't be easy without compromising flexibility, but I'll come up with something."

"I'll be fine," Peter promised. "Please, Mr. Stark—don't worry about me!"

There was a long, tense pause. Then Tony was sighing and saying, "You'd better have a plan or I'm going after you." And the thought was terrifying, so Peter nodded once, subtly, and waited for his chance.

The man in charge snarled, "If you won't give yourself up, we'll just have to kill you both. Fire at will!"

Peter moved as fast as he possibly could, knowing his life was hanging in the balance. He flung an arm out, firing a web high up in a tree, and with his other arm he reached back and grabbed the muzzle of the gun. The bullet bounced off, though he was pretty sure it had broken a finger, and the troop was so shocked that Peter had all the time in the world to flick his wrist and zoom out of danger.

Well— _out of danger_  being a relative term. An entire squadron of men was still firing at both him and Tony.

"Kid, stay out of sight!" Tony yelled through the coms. "There are too many, and you're not bulletproof!"

Peter slung his way to another tree, knowing that staying in one place for more than a second would spell death. "I can still help!" he protested. "I'll be fine!"

Tony didn't have time to respond before he was yelping, ducking as bullets peppered his suit. He fired as fast as he could, picking off men where he could, but there were simply too many—and the ship was beginning to fire on them from above.

Peter was nearly blown out of the air again, and he had to launch himself to one side to avoid being put out of action. "Karen, rapid fire!"

He shot down as many goons as he could, bringing down trees and throwing them down to create a little cover for Tony. He was barely making a dent—but it  _was_ a dent, and he knew he had to keep going if he didn't want to be killed.

A bullet clipped him in the arm, and he yelled.

"Peter!"

"I'm okay!" he called, his body already working to repair the damage. "It just grazed me!"

"You should stay out of sight! I can handle this without putting you in danger!'

Peter didn't respond. He kept firing, swinging from tree to tree and doing his best to put down as many goons as he could. The craft in the sky was still firing, but Tony was always a step ahead, and Peter had the cover of the trees to keep him safe.

Except, it didn't last long.

It happened fast.

The craft fired once, and there was this awful tearing sound as the blast hit Tony square in the chest.

"Mr. Stark!" Peter gasped, jerking around mid-swing and landing hard on the forest floor. Tony was down, and the coms were dead, and Peter was there in the blink of an eye. "Mr. Stark, can you hear me? Mr. Stark!"

Tony didn't respond. He was out cold.

"Oh,  _great—_ Mr. Stark, I can't take down the base on my own!"

A storm of bullets flew toward him, his senses alerting him a moment before he would have been stricken down, and he had to act fast to keep out of the jaws of death. Behind him Tony lay motionless, completely out. The front of his suit was mangled beyond repair. The arc reactor was no longer glowing.

"Karen, can you contact Friday?" he yelled above the sound of gunfire. Now that he was alone he could only go on the defensive, and he could barely keep ahead of the bullets.

There was a pause. Then,  _"She says he's alive, but injured. He won't be waking up anytime soon."_

"Okay, then I'll have to—!"

_Bang!_

His senses told him what was about to happen, but it was a moment too late. He tried to flip backward, but it was only enough so that when the blast hit, it hit his chest instead of his head.

He flew back for a second time, cracked into a tree, and fell to the ground. The impact shook the earth, something fell from above, and the next moment there was this awful impact to Peter's stomach that left him choking and wheezing around this tangy, thick taste in his mouth. When he tried to move, nothing responded.

The leader of the HYDRA goons laughed, dark and dangerous. "Perfect. You there, take Stark and get him aboard the ship. He'll make a pretty hostage to use against the rest of the Avengers."

Peter strained, but once again nothing would listen to him.  _No—Mr. Stark!_

"What about the kid?" someone asked. A gun lowered to point at his head, but Peter refused to shut his eyes and just accept death.

Luckily, that wasn't necessary.

"Leave him," the man said carelessly. "With those injuries, he'll be dead in an hour. Stark is the one we want."

The gun lowered, and Peter could do nothing but stare at the sky as the men around him retreated.  _No, no, no…I have to save Mr. Stark! Come on, why can't I move?_

Once again he tried to rise, but this time there was this sharp, awful pain in his stomach. When he reached down, he was horrified to find what felt like a large chunk of shrapnel lodged there. Blood was gushing out around his fingertips in volumes large enough to make him feel sick.  _Oh, god._

He could feel his body trying to heal around the metal, but he was too stunned to remove it. He knew how powerful his healing abilities were, he  _knew_  this wouldn't kill him—it would just put him out of commission and force him to watch as Tony was taken hostage.

Except, he couldn't even see it. All he could do was lie there, vision and hearing spotting in and out, as Tony was moved into some kind of ship. The other HYDRA agents were following, boarding a large aircraft Peter couldn't even see. Then the engines were roaring, the ship was taking off, and Peter had to watch as it soared overhead and vanished.

Panic choked him. His fingers, cold and clammy, scrabbled at the shrapnel lodged in his stomach to no avail. He had to get it  _out._ If he did, the remnants of Venom in his bloodstream would seep down into the wound and patch it up. But if he didn't, his body would be caught in an endless strain to heal around something that wasn't supposed to be there.

But the situation was swiftly being taken out of his hands. He was losing a lot of blood, his head was spinning, he thought his chest was starting to feel sticky again, and everything just felt too cold and too hot at the same time. His vision was beginning to spot.

"K-Karen…?" he stuttered. "I…I n-need you to call for help."

_"S.H.I.E.L.D. has been on their way for some time now. They will arrive within the hour."_

She sounded scared for an AI, and that was how Peter knew it wasn't good. He tried one more time to remove the shrapnel, but all that earned him was a wave of dizziness and then nothing.

He lost consciousness.


	6. Tomes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't have time to answer comments this week because I've been swamped with moving, so let me thank you all here! I really appreciate the kind words and the kudos.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter! I'm very fond of this one.

When Peter regained consciousness, it was with a flash of panic and pure adrenaline. For a moment he flailed, the events of the past day coming back to him in a horrifying wave, until suddenly there were hands on his shoulders that weren't strong enough to push him down but  _were_  strong enough to send a message.

"Peter! Peter, calm yourself. You're safe."

He recognized the voice. It cut through the blind panic, and his struggling decreased until he was lying there, on some soft surface in some room he couldn't yet process, gasping for breath.

"You're safe," the voice said again. "Come back to us, Peter—you're okay."

His vision sharpened.

Peter's heart beat out of control as he stared up at a white ceiling in a white room, the lights almost blinding in their intensity. Looking to one side, he saw a row of monitors displaying his vitals and a swath of other numbers and chats. He was in the infirmary, then. He'd become more than familiar with this place in the past month.

"Peter?"

He looked to the other side, and there were Shuri and Dr. Banner.

Peter blinked. "Am I…back in New York?"

The two exchanged a heavy glance. "You are," Shuri said carefully. "Peter, do…do you remember anything?"

He closed his eyes, because he remembered  _everything._ He remembered the fight, remembered being blown out of the sky, remembered  _Tony_ being blown out of the sky.

Oh god— _Tony._

"Where's Mr. Stark?" Peter burst out, lurching up in his cot. He felt no pain, and he thought it was the result of good medication before he looked down and saw that there were no bandages and no wound. Someone must have removed the shrapnel, and his body had sealed itself shut without aid.

Shuri must have spotted his hand flying to his stomach, because she ignored his question in favor of saying, "You were hurt very badly when they brought you in. I feared that we might lose you, but once I removed the shrapnel you healed within the hour. Your abilities…they are truly extraordinary."

_"Mr. Stark_ ," Peter repeated, panic rising in his throat.

Shuri went quiet.

"Peter?" Bruce stepped close, expression grim. "We…we're not entirely sure where Tony is, or what happened. There was no security footage of the encounter, so you're our only hope of figuring where he ended up."

Peter let his head fall back against the pillows. "How much do you know?" he rasped. Calmly, because there was this dark, awful emotion bubbling beneath his skin, but for some reason it was just beyond reach. It didn't feel real. It felt like everything was okay, and like this was just a horrible nightmare and Tony was right in the other room and he hadn't messed up and gotten his mentor captured.

Bruce seemed to sense his detachment. "Hey, Peter—come on, you have to focus!"

"How much?" he repeated blandly.

Bruce and Shuri exchanged glances.

"We know that you encountered HYDRA," Shuri said. "We know that you fought them and lost, and that you were gravely injured in some kind of explosion. S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived and lifted you out, where I removed the shrapnel and allowed you to heal. That is all we know."

"Not much, then." Peter stared blankly at the ceiling. Tony was gone. Tony had been taken away, and it was his fault. If he'd been faster, if he'd sensed that blast coming before it had hit him and knocked him out…

He closed his eyes.

"Peter, no!"

He jolted, Shuri's hands landing on his shoulders once again to get his attention.

"Please," she said, "don't shut us out. It must hurt, whatever's happened, but we can't help unless you tell us! You don't have to do this alone."

He blinked hard. There was this haze over his vision, and he wasn't sure what was happening, and everything felt numb.

"He's still in shock," he thought he heard Bruce whisper. "The contagion can heal his physical ailments, but this is emotional. He needs time."

"We can't  _give_  him time," Shuri said sharply, like he wasn't even there. "Stark could be dead or dying, and we have to move to rescue him immediately. And from what you've told me, Dr. Banner, your plan hinges on  _everyone_  being there to take out the final HYDRA base in Germany. We have to find Stark, get Peter fixed up, and send them there as fast as we can."

"Unless Tony is  _in_  the final base as a captive," Bruce said. "Come on—Peter, you have to talk to us. You have to tell us what happened!"

He wanted to. But the haze was strong, and he felt like someone was pressing on his chest, and everything was horrible. He couldn't breathe. Why couldn't he  _breathe?_

The heart monitor began to beep faster and faster.

"Peter— _Peter!"_

He tried to grab at his chest, to remove the weight, but it wasn't working. His lungs burned.

Shuri's voice went panicked. "Dr. Banner, the sedative!"

"Are you sure—?"

_"Now!"_

Bruce went pale. Then he was reaching for a syringe and jamming it into Peter's arm, compressing the plunger, and everything went kind of sort and funny. Peter's lungs stopped burning.

He slipped off without a fight.

 

* * *

 

When Peter next opened his eyes, things were calmer.

He felt better. Not great, since Tony's absence was a constant weight in the back of his mind, but…better. The hazy film over his vision was gone, and he could breathe, and everything seemed a little more manageable.

"You had a panic attack," was the first thing Shuri said to him. "We had no choice but to sedate you for your own safety, as your body was already under such strain. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," he managed, voice a bit raspy from disuse. "I…should be thanking you, really. Removing that shrapnel probably saved my life."

She smiled, a little wearily. "Perhaps."

Peter slowly pushed himself up, and Shuri was immediately reaching to elevate the top half of the bed so he didn't have to strain himself. He was still in the infirmary, but this time the sensors were gone. It was quiet.

The past day was coming back to him more clearly now, unobscured by that awful haze that had overtaken him when he'd last awoken. Now that he was done panicking, he understood all too well what had happened and what would have to be done to make things right.

"Mr. Stark is gone," he said, not realizing how that would be taken until he heard Bruce suck in a sharp breath from the corner of the room.

"Dead?" he asked, voice tight.

Peter jolted. "No! No—not dead, just…taken."

Shuri seemed to understand. "HYDRA took him during the attack. I'm assuming they knocked you out and captured him while you were down. But why didn't they take you as well? Surely having two bargaining chips is better than one."

"They thought I was going to die," Peter said, shivering as he remembered it. They hit me in the chest with this blast from an aircraft that flung me back, and I hit my head on the way down. Then there was this  _impact_ , and blood was everywhere and there was this awful piece of metal lodged in my stomach. The guy in charge said I was dead anyway, and he took Tony and left."

"Was he injured?" Bruce asked, voice trembling in the slightest.

Peter nodded, a little of that familiar nausea returning. "They hit him with the same thing, but his armor saved his life. It was destroyed in the process, though, so he's defenseless now."

Shuri raised her chin. "From what I understand, Tony Stark is never defenseless. I'm certain that he'll be able to stay alive while we stage a rescue."

"Right…" Peter let his eyes slip closed for a moment, trying to calm down before he started thinking about what Tony could be going through right now because of him. If he'd been faster, he could have saved him.

But Shuri seemed to know just what he was thinking. "You're not allowed to blame yourself for this," she said firmly. "All these thoughts of  _what if I'd been faster,_ or  _what if I'd fought harder_ —they're toxic. You can't change what fought with all your strength and lost, as all of us have at one point or another. Use this to better yourself, not to sulk."

He tried to smile at her, but it was a bit pained. "I'll try. I mean—I know that blaming myself is bad and all that, and…" He trailed off. Talking about his own guilt would just eat up valuable time. Time they could be spending looking for Tony. "Look, let's just focus on finding him."

Shuri narrowed her eyes suspiciously but didn't say anything.

"If they have Tony, they'll probably move him to the most secure location they have." Bruce pulled out his phone, flipping over the map of HYDRA bases. "Obviously that's going to be the one in Germany."

"We have to tell the others!" Peter burst out. "They have to know that HYDRA has Mr. Stark, that way they know they have to rescue him and not just tear the whole base down!"

"We'll tell them immediately," Bruce soothed. "In the meantime, you should stay here and rest."

Peter's expression hardened. "No. I'm okay."

"I don't know if you realize this, Pete, but you were just nearly killed!"

"Hardly," he said, voice tight with frustration and worry. "Venom healed me. I'm okay now."

"The contagion healed you," Shuri corrected. "It was incredible! I have footage of the material bubbling to the surface and filling in the wound."

Peter shuddered at the thought, still unnerved by the fact that that stuff was just  _in_  him now. "It doesn't matter what healed me, what matters is that it's over now." He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His head spun a little, but he ignored it in favor of putting just a little weight on his feet. When he didn't immediately pitch over, he pushed himself up.

"This isn't a good idea," Bruce said, but Peter ignored him.

"I have to help," he said. "Mr. Stark saved me from HYDRA, and now I have to save him."

Bruce looked like he wanted to protest, but Shuri spoke before he had the chance. "I understand," she said, "but at the very least you must rest while you have the chance. Dr. Banner will tell the Avengers about Stark."

Peter opened his mouth to argue, but then he saw the unforgiving expressions on both of their faces and knew that he was beaten. He sat back down.

"Good," Shuri said. "Your body is repaired, but your mind still needs time to recover. Take that time now, while Dr. Banner speaks with the rest of the team and develops a plan."

Bruce took the hint. "I'll go contact them," he said. "Peter, I want you to tell Shuri every detail you can remember about that mission. Any little thing could help."

He nodded. "I'll do my best."

 

* * *

 

"This," said Steve Rogers, "is not good."

The lot of them were standing in a hologram conference call, having been called by Bruce after leaving Peter and Shuri alone. He trusted that she would take good care of him while he put the pieces back together.

Natasha crossed her arms and leaned heavily on one leg. "You could say that again. The rest of our attacks went off without a hitch, but of course Tony picked the one fringe base with aerial support."

"Peter's okay, right?" Clint asked.

Bruce nodded, though he was still a little concerned. The kid had been through a lot in the past few weeks. "He's fine. A little rattled from the whole thing, but he'll be back on his feet in no time."

"That's good," Natasha sighed, relieved. "At least one of them made it out."

"With any luck, Tony will make it out too." Sam stepped forward. "Tony always made a point of putting trackers in all his tech, just in case the bad guys ever got their hands on any of it. Can we tap into those trackers and find him?"

"Peter says the suit was practically demolished," Bruce said, and the mood in the room dropped. "I'll still try, but it's unlikely. Judging from what I've heard, it seems like Tony was probably taken to the base in Germany. That's the base that's most equipped to handle a high caliber captive like him."

There was a beat of silence, then, where everyone was remembering how HYDRA had attempted to use Bucky as a bargaining chip when  _he'd_  been the one captured, and how difficult it had been to get him out.

Bucky cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly, saying, "We'll have to be careful about this. You know what they tried to do to me, threatening to have me killed at the slightest whiff of resistance from the Avengers, and I'm sure they're poised to do it again with Stark."

"We'll come up with something," Steve assured him, a hand landing on his shoulder. "Between us we know all of HYDRA's tricks, and we won't let them catch us off guard again."

"We'll get Stark out," Wanda agreed, expression one of fierce determination. "He's not allowed to leave us just yet."

"Great, then what's the plan?" Bruce asked.

Steve said, "Leave that to us. Look after Peter and make sure he stays on base. He shouldn't be involved in this."

"He won't like that," Bruce warned. "He said that since Tony saved him from HYDRA before, it's his job to save  _him_  this time."

Steve just shook his head, radiating a mixture of admiration and pity. "Tell him he's done enough by making it back alive to tell us what happened. If not for him, we'd have no idea Tony had even been captured."

"Still won't like it," Bruce said, but he agreed with Steve wholeheartedly. Peter had been through enough in the past week without having to go on some awful mission to rescue the man that had taken him in after his aunt's death. The man who'd had to watch him die, overwhelmed by Venom and choked out of his own body.

"Okay," Steve said, turning to the others. "Tony and Peter never reached the second base they were assigned to wipe out, but I think it can wait. Let's meet up at the base in Germany and find Tony before he gets killed."

"Come up with a plan on the way?" Natasha suggested.

"You read my mind, Nat. Come on, guys, let's get going!"

The signals flickered out one by one, and then Bruce was left standing alone in an empty room. There was much that had to be done—he was in the middle of studying the gauntlet, for one, and though he couldn't find the purple stone because Tony had whisked it off somewhere before being captured, he had that to study as well. And of course, there was the unconscious man that accompanied both of those things. The man that was beginning to show signs of waking up.

He went back to the lab with the intent of asking Shuri if she'd made any progress studying the gauntlet, which he'd offered her for consideration after Peter and Tony's departure. But when he stuck his head through the doorway he saw Peter and Shuri sitting side by side, speaking in low tones, and he knew that interrupting wouldn't be right.

So he left the two alone, going to work on his own research as Peter recovered.

 

* * *

 

Peter got one restless night of sleep before he was waking up after a harsh nightmare, one where he'd seen Tony shot down right in front of him over and over again and been unable to do anything to stop it. After that, waking up with his heart pounding and his lungs burning and his chest heavy with the familiar slickness of the contagion, he knew there was no point in going back to sleep. He sat at the edge of his bed and watched the floor.

Before he'd gone to bed, Bruce had come in to see him again. Bruce had told him that he wasn't allowed to go on the mission to rescue Tony, that he'd been through enough for one day and needed to stay back and let the other Avengers handle it.

Peter had protested, of course. He'd argued in circles for an hour before Bruce finally told him that if he went back into battle he would be a liability, and that shut him up immediately. The last thing he wanted to be was a burden, and that meant doing what Bruce said. It meant shutting up and waiting for Tony to get back.

But it also meant a little more than that.

"Your powers are still largely uncontrollable," Bruce had told him as another excuse to explain away why he wasn't going. "If we're there to rescue Tony and you get hit with a dizzy spell at the wrong moment, you could go down, and then we'd have to save both of you. So take a while to get yourself under control, physically and emotionally, and let Shuri figure out what's wrong. Once all that happens, we'll let you back out into the field."

So, the solution was simple.

He had to get better, and fast.

Shuri had skirted around the topic like she knew something but didn't want to tell him just yet, but Peter had at least one way he could train until she was willing to talk.

_Find your new one hundred percent. Understand it. Learn from it. Once you do, you'll better understand your new abilities._

Clearly Tony's automated suits weren't doing it. But he was pretty sure there were still some large sheets of varying metals down in Tony's lab, samples from a few years ago when he'd been picking out the right material to hold the Hulk at bay. Those would make good target practice.

Everything was eerily silent when Peter left the infirmary. Shuri had left some time ago, Bruce was probably in his own wing of the lab, and everyone else was off fighting HYDRA or captured by them. So as Peter picked his way down the corridor, it almost felt like a dream. The compound was never this quiet.

The guilt was still there, bubbling. It pinched at him every time he took a step. He didn't want to think about Tony, trapped and alone in a HYDRA base with no immediate way out. He tried to tell himself that it would be okay, that Tony had been in situations worse than this before and he'd probably be there again, that he had the skills to keep himself alive until he could be rescued. But there was still that guilt, the knowledge that if Tony got hurt it was because of  _him,_ and even though he didn't dare say it aloud, that guilt was crushing.

He made it to Tony's lab soon enough. It was strange, not immediately reaching for his suit to help control his strength, but he trusted Shuri. He'd tried Tony's way, and it had gotten him nowhere. Now it was time to try hers.

_"Hello, Peter."_

He nearly jumped out of his skin as the lab lit up. "Karen! Oh my god, you almost gave me a heart attack!"

_"I'm sorry. Is there a reason you're walking around at this time of the morning? No one else is up."_

"Just practicing," Peter said, stepping further into the room and looking around. He couldn't quite remember where Tony kept the samples, but he knew they were here. Tony wasn't one to just throw things like that away. "Hey, do you know where Mr. Stark kept those samples we were working with a while back?"

_"They're in that storage unit there."_

A light flickered, and Peter looked up to see the exact unit she was talking about. "Thanks, Karen."

_"Of course. But Peter, I believe you're supposed to be resting. Do you need me to contact Dr. Banner so he can administer another light sedative?"_

"What? Hey, no—Karen, don't you dare! I'm fine, I'm just going to practice for a while."

_"Very well. Please be careful."_

"Yeah, yeah…" He stepped over to the storage unit and pulled it open. There was an entire row of metal sheets hanging there. They were of varying thicknesses and materials, remnants of Tony's tests from a few years prior. Now they would serve a different purpose.

With Peter's strength, it took no time at all to haul the first set of sheets out. Tony had these weird hook things attached to the ceiling, and he attached the sheets to them just like Tony had done when he was testing them himself. He would work his way down until he found one he couldn't punch through, then one he couldn't dent, and that would be it. A start, at least, like when he'd first gotten Venom's powers.

He started in the middle, because he knew the lighter metals didn't stand a chance. The first one he struck in the middle  _also_  didn't stand a chance, as it crumpled and tore and became almost immediately useless. The second fared almost the same, as did the third. By the time he made it to the end of the first set, he was facing only minimal resistance. He hung up the second and got to work.

He was halfway through that set when the doors to the lab whisked open, and Shuri was standing there with this exhausted, baffled look on her face. "Peter? What on earth are you doing? The entire compound is shaking!"

He stopped mid-punch, turning to face her. "Oh, no—I didn't mean to wake you!"

"You didn't," she said, though it was obviously a lie. She stepped inside, and the doors closed behind her. "But the question stands—what are you doing here?"

He gestured to the metal sheets. "Testing my strength. New one hundred percent, remember?"

Shuri's eyes lit up, tired as she was, and she smiled. "Ah, but of course! I'm glad you took my advice to heart. Though, I should remind you that you're supposed to be resting."

"I'll rest when Mr. Stark is safe." He turned his attention back to the sheets, landing another blow. "I feel fine, Shuri, really! I heal really fast now."

She hopped up onto one of the lab tables, legs dangling. "I know."

"Then you know I really am fine!" He punched again, and the metal gave. He moved to the next one. "Dr. Banner said that once I got my powers under control I could help with missions. If I get them under control  _now,_ I can go save Mr. Stark!"

Shuri's expression didn't shift. "You'll need to work hard for that to happen. Tell me, did refraining from wearing the suit help?"

"Yeah, actually. It really did." Throughout the mission, he hadn't once punched too hard or too soft. In fact, his strength had been an asset without the suit draining it and storing it away for future use.

"See? I told you it was the suit! I'll have to work on designing something for you, a catalyst rather than an inhibitor."

For a moment he wanted to protest, knowing that Tony would be mad if he wore someone else's tech. But then he remembered that Tony was gone, captured because of him, and he thought that maybe Shuri's tech would be a good thing if it stopped this from happening again. "Yeah," he said, "that would be great."

He went back to work, Shuri quiet behind him. By the end of the next row, his hardest blows weren't able to get through the metal. It was strange, too—it felt  _good_  to be able to hit that hard and not destroy anything. Like he was expending all that pent-up energy at once, on something that wouldn't hurt anyone.

"It's funny," Shuri said as he set up the new sheets and got to punching. "There are so many people in this world that would kill to have the strength that's just fallen into your lap. There are  _so many_  people that would be thrilled to be able to kill with a flick of their wrist."

Peter shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, but I really don't think it's as good as they think it would be. It's really difficult, trying to control it."

"Yes, but they wouldn't  _want_ to control it. They'd want to let their powers shine; they'd want to kill brutally and often to remind people of their power. They would be  _villains_."

"I guess that's always how it goes, isn't it?" Peter lowered his arms. "Being a villain is so  _easy_. If I just went and teamed up with HYDRA, I wouldn't have to control my strength because it would play into what they'd want from me. But I'm not with them, so I have to figure out how to get it under control and blend in. That's just how it has to be."

Shuri watched him, amused. "You're very noble. Not once in all of this have you cursed those that did this to you, or wished for revenge."

"Well…maybe not out loud. Believe me, there have been plenty of moments where I've wanted someone to pay."

"But you don't act on those impulses, or even give them a voice." Her smile grew, warmly, and Peter flushed. "It is as I said—you're quite noble. Here you are, attempting to control something you don't even understand, when it would be so much easier to turn that power on the enemy and watch them suffer."

He wasn't sure what to say. "I mean, yeah—it would probably feel good to take revenge, but it wouldn't be right. And I know that sounds like, ridiculously cheesy, but that's just the truth. I wasn't given these powers to hurt anyone. I…I would be doing a disservice to a few really good people in my past if I started doing that."

Shuri didn't press him. She seemed to understand. "You could have taught Killmonger a thing or two," she said quietly, and Peter didn't know who that was, but he didn't press her, either. There were some things that had to stay private.

Distracted, Peter's next punch barely made a dent. When he tried again, the dent was miniscule compared to earlier attempts.

"You're getting close," Shuri said, voice light, as if the past few minutes hadn't happened.

Peter nodded and moved to the next sheet, then the next. And finally, when he lashed out, his fist rang off the metal without leaving a mark.

He'd found it. It was the same as last time.

"That's titanium alloy infused with a vibranium mesh," Shuri said, though Peter had no idea how she knew. "You're stronger than even I had anticipated."

Peter was gripped with the irrational desire to apologize, but he wasn't quite sure why. It wasn't his fault he had this incredible power.

"You should use that as a punching bag," Shuri said. "Get a good idea of your strength, then move back down the line and test different amounts of strength with different metals. Soon enough you should begin to understand."

He was already beginning to do just that. He smiled, feeling somewhat okay for the first time in weeks, and things seemed a little brighter.

Shuri pushed off the table. "Well, it appears as though morning has arrived."

Sure enough, Peter turned to see light beginning to seep in from the windows. The sun was just beginning to kiss the sky.

"Come on," Shuri said. "You need to eat. And when we're done…I think I might have some ideas about what's causing the contagion to reappear on your skin."

Peter's head whipped up. "What? Shuri!"

"Food first!" she insisted, smirking at the disbelief and anticipation in his voice. "After that I'll give you the explanation that may or may not be correct. Though between the two of us, I strongly believe it to be correct."

Peter's chest sparked with hope, and when Shuri left the lab, he was only a few moments behind.


	7. Downtime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Shuri are so fun to write one on one, I had such an amazing time with this chapter! I really hope you guys enjoy reading this one as much as I did writing it.

When Tony clawed his way back to the waking world, the first thing he felt was a flash of overwhelming panic.

It took him a minute to calm down and realize he wasn't going to get anywhere by freaking out. He took deep breaths just like Pepper always had him do when he was having an attack, kept his eyes closed tight, and eventually his gasps turned more into heaving breaths, which turned into normal breathing.

_Okay,_ he thought,  _don't freak out. Stay calm and assess the situation._

Keeping his eyes closed in case someone was watching for when he woke up, Tony ran through the last few things he remembered. Going to the base, attacking it, and then…

He cringed. He wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but he did remember a bright flash of light and an intense, crushing pain in his chest. After that, nothing.

Finally ready, he cracked his eyes open just a little and found that he was staring into complete darkness. He had no idea where he was. When he tried to sit up, rope tugged at his wrists and ankles and he realized that no, he hadn't been taken back to the compound by Peter or by S.H.I.E.L.D.

He'd been captured.

Tony was familiar with being held hostage. So as panic began to rise again, creating a sour lump in his stomach, he had the presence of mind keep counting his breaths and get his emotions under control. He'd done this before, and he could do it again. He could escape.

He inched his way upward, leaning his back against the wall of what had to be a prison cell in a HYDRA base. "Peter?" he whispered into the darkness, because he hadn't seen the kid go down but that didn't mean it hadn't happened after he'd lost consciousness. "Kid, are you here?"

There was no response, but Tony knew it didn't mean that Peter wasn't around. He could just be unconscious, or he could be in a different cell.

Or…or he could be dead. But Tony wasn't going to think about that, because the thought made his chest tighten painfully and his head start up this low, pounding throb. No—he was sure the kid was perfectly fine. He was difficult to kill, as Venom had found out the hard way.

Tony tried to look around, but the room was so dark that he could barely even see the outline of his own legs stretched out in front of him. Okay, then—it was time to shed a little light on the situation.

He reached for the arc reactor in his chest, fingers meeting with the tattered remains of his shirt and brushing them to one side. His armor was gone. The reactor wasn't glowing, which was strange—and when Tony finally got his hands on the thing, he understood why. Whatever had hit him to knock him unconscious, it had completely shattered the reactor. Even the nanotechnology wasn't working to repair it, having been fried in the attack.

He was dead in the water.

Tony leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes again, because there was nothing to see and he didn't want to keep staring into darkness. Without the reactor and his suit, he didn't have the power to break out of whatever hole HYDRA had thrown him into. He was well and truly trapped, at least for now. He'd just have to bide his time until either he found a way to escape, or the Avengers figured out where he was and came for him.

_I can do this. I just have to stay calm and wait for rescue._

There was a sound at the door. A lock clicking, he thought, before a few backlit figures were stepping into the room. Light trickled in, sickly and yellowed, and Tony's fears were confirmed. He was in a small, dingy prison cell. And as the figures drew closer, he saw that they were wearing HYDRA uniforms.

"Tony Stark," one of them said, raising a gun. "We have a few questions for you."

He pressed his back to the wall, but there was nowhere else to go. "You'll have to make an appointment at the front desk," he quipped, keeping a tight lock on the tremor in his voice. "I'm a very busy man, you know."

The man wasn't amused. He released the safety on the gun he was holding, but Tony didn't flinch. These guys wanted something from him; they wouldn't dare kill him until they got it.

"We implore you to think again," the man said.

"Wow, well if you're  _imploring_  me…"

The man had a mask on, so his face wasn't visible, but the way his entire body tensed led Tony to believe that he was snarling. "Get him up," he snapped to the other guard. "He'll talk one way or another."

Tony opened his mouth to give some kind of snappy retort, one to make him feel better about the fact that he'd been captured and he didn't even know if he'd make it out alive, but he didn't get the chance before he was being yanked up and shoved forcefully toward the door.

He…had a bad feeling about how this was going to end.

 

* * *

 

Peter was shoved back into the lab after breakfast, Shuri glancing over her shoulder to make sure Bruce was nowhere in sight. She claimed that she wanted to explain her findings without an audience, which just made Peter even more nervous than he already was. By the time she got him into the lab and sitting on an examination table, he was shaking.

"Relax," Shuri soothed, seeing his nervousness. "You have nothing to fear."

"So I'm not dying?" Peter asked. He almost didn't dare to hope for a good answer.

Shuri laughed, "No, I don't believe you are. Though please, allow me to explain what I believe is happening before you make any assumptions."

He held his breath.

Shuri turned, clanging around in some of the lab equipment, then turned back with what looked like a chart of some kind. It was mostly level, but there were a few jagged spots here and there. "The probes I injected into your bloodstream have been doing their job," she said. "I've been trying to determine two things about your condition—why it's happening, and how it's happening. Of these, I think I might have an understanding of  _why_."

Peter looked down at the chart as Shuri ran her finger along the line, pointing out the high points. "What are those supposed to be?" he asked.

"They're the points at which the contagion began to seep through your skin," she said. "There haven't been many since I arrived, but I do believe I'm beginning to see a pattern. Here, look at this." She pulled out another chart, laying the two side by side.

"They look the same," Peter realized. They had the same spikes, the same dips, the same  _everything_.

Shuri nodded. "It's your adrenaline. Or rather, a mixture of adrenaline and all the other feelings and biological responses that correlate with nearly getting killed."

He blinked. "I'm sorry—what?"

"You haven't noticed?" Shuri said with a frown. "Peter, every time the contagion has made an appearance, it has been because you felt you were in immediate mortal danger."

He paused, thinking back on it. "But—the one that happened just before you got here, that wasn't anything like that! I just had a bad dream, and—"

"And your body responded accordingly," Shuri pointed out. "When you awoke, was your heart not pounding? Were your lungs not burning with the strain of the fight?"

"Well…yeah, actually."

Shuri nodded once, sharply, and continued. "It seems to me that any time you feel you are about to be killed or severely injured, the contagion makes an appearance. Like it's responding to you, and what you fear will come to pass."

…She was right. Thinking about it in those terms, Peter remembered every time the contagion had appeared in the past weeks. When he'd had his nightmare, when he'd thought one of the automated suits was about to blast him in the head, when he'd been hit by that ship outside the HYDRA base. All moments where he'd been prepared for the possibility of death or serious injury.

"What does it mean?" he asked, voice soft with anticipation.

Shuri paused. "Well I can't say for sure, but I do have a theory. But first, allow me to test something."

"Sure, do whatever you—oh my god,  _Shuri—!"_

_Bang!_

The gunshot echoed painfully throughout the lab, especially loud to Peter's sensitive hearing. When the terror faded and his vision cleared, he saw Shuri standing in front of him with a gun leveled at his chest, muzzle spitting out smoke from the shot she'd fired. Horrified, Peter's hands dropped to his chest to feel—

_Oh._ There was no bullet. She'd fired a blank. But what  _was_ there was a quickly growing spot of that thick, clear goop.

"I'm sorry," Shuri said, "but I had to test it one last time to be sure. Now I feel quite confident in my diagnosis."

"Which is…?" he asked, heart still beating out of control as the shock of the gunshot refused to fade.

She lowered the gun. "It's protecting you."

Peter stared. It—it was  _protecting_ him? But no, that couldn't be it! This stuff had literally killed him once before, there was no way it was actively helping him now!

Shuri seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. "I know it seems crazy, but I strongly believe that the contagion is trying to help you."

" _Help_  me—Shuri, come on, you know what this stuff did not just to me, but to the rest of the Avengers! There's no way it's just changed its mind about wanting to kill us!"

"The  _problem_ ," she said, "is that it no longer  _has_  a mind. Though it has been some time, surely you remember the experiments that led to your injection! I separated Venom's conscious mind from his body, leaving that body to become a thoughtless gel capable of infusing its host with incredible strength and regenerative abilities.  _That_  was the substance you were injected with. There is no Venom! His mind is gone, and what is within you is nothing but a gel attempting to do what it was made to do."

"Which is…?"

Shuri jabbed a finger at the charts. "It's trying to help you, Peter! Or, you're trying to help yourself."

It clicked, but only a little. "So…are you thinking that I'm controlling it?"

"Subconsciously, I'd say the answer is yes. My theory is this—that the gel, contagion, whatever you want to call it, has no mind of its own. Therefore when it was injected into your chest, it became beholden to the wants and needs of  _your_  mind. Of course you didn't realize this, and therefore made no attempt to command it as Venom once did. But subconsciously, you were doing just that. Any sign of real danger caused the contagion to react to the distress of its host."

Peter was suddenly really glad he was sitting down. "That's…"

"Insane," Shuri said with a knowing smile. "I know. But Peter, look at the facts! Is it really so crazy to think that maybe what we injected you with was more than a quick patch for your injuries?"

He pinched at the bridge of his nose. He suddenly had a headache. "What about the dizziness? And if this is true, why did it take so long to start showing up?"

"I'm not sure, but the dizzy spells could have been caused by the contagion settling into your body and struggling to become fully integrated. It could have been just a slight hiccup caused by such a major biological change."

Peter felt a little sick just thinking about it. "So it's just—producing more of that gel stuff whenever I'm in danger."

"I'd say it's not producing more so much as it's extracting it from where it already resides inside your body."

"But—what exactly is it supposed to protect me from, seeping out like that? If that bullet had been real, I would have died regardless of a little goopy puddle on my skin!"

Shuri shrugged. "Perhaps not. We don't yet understand the full abilities of the contagion, not since the removal of Venom's conscious mind. Who's to say it couldn't stop a bullet?"

He stared. "Right…"

"I may be wrong," Shuri admitted, "as much as I don't want to even suggest such a thing. "But after looking at all the evidence I've been given, I truly believe that this is the most likely explanation. The contagion isn't hurting you, and it's  _only_  appeared when you need help. And who knows? If it's truly wired into your conscious mind as well as the subconscious, perhaps in time you could learn to control it."

_Control it?_

Shuri threw up her hands, seeing his incredulity. "I'm not sure, but it seems possible! It's just something you'll have to work on."

"So that's it, then?" Peter asked. "I have a clean bill of health? The dizzy spells are just growing pains, the contagion is my friend, all of this is just…totally okay?"

"Well, I'm not sure about  _totally_ okay. But for now, I don't think it's dangerous for you to fight."

He grumbled, "Say that to the Avengers. They  _still_  won't let me help them rescue Tony."

"No," Shuri said, "but the sooner you understand your abilities, the sooner they will as well. And once that happens, you'll be allowed back on the team."

So, what—he just had to sit around punching things while Tony was in danger? He had to stay behind like a child while all the adults went out to save someone  _he'd_  gotten captured?

Shuri clasped a hand to his shoulder. "Peter."

He looked up. "Sorry, sorry…it's just a lot."

"I know it is. But you'll figure it out."

It was too much to think about, too much to deal with at once. But Shuri's reassurance uncoiled something in his chest, and just a little of the tension drained out of him. He wasn't sure how this was going to work, coming to understand his powers. But he was going to do everything he could to reach that understanding, and to use it to save as many people as possible.

He smiled, though it was the tiniest bit plastic. "I don't suppose you have any recommendations for the whole 'understanding my powers' thing?"

"That's up to you," Shuri said. "It's not like I've ever had something as powerful as Venom in my head, or injected into my body."

He was on his own, then.

Shuri patted him once on the shoulder, then took back her hand. "Good luck. If you need anything, you know where to find me—I'll be hanging in for a while longer to help Dr. Banner with that interesting purple stone, and the strange gauntlet Captain Rogers discovered in that HYDRA base."

It was good to know she would still be around, and he told her as much. "I'll find you if anything…um,  _happens_."

"Of course."

She stepped away, and Peter went back to punching.

 

* * *

 

Peter had a lot to think about.

That night Bruce left them, saying that the rest of the team had called for his aid in Germany. Shuri promised to stay until he got back, working on the mysterious artifacts and (though she wouldn't say it to his face) watching over Peter to make sure nothing bad happened.

Bruce left in the latest hours of the night, and then the two were alone save for the remaining Wakandan scientists working in the lowest level of the lab. Peter didn't see them much, but he knew they were there because sometimes one of them would slip up and deliver something to Shuri. Test results, he thought. They were working on the gauntlet.

Shuri was preoccupied with tests of her own. So Peter, given the perfect opportunity, continued to train.

He set up a training course using Tony's machines and a bunch of the remaining metal sheets, and then he ran himself through it again and again. Using an old suit, flinging himself from one side of the room to another and flipping and ducking and punching and getting used to what he could do. It was kind of fun, not having to hold back. Not having to fear his own powers.

But that was only half the struggle.

When he was done training in the lab that night, Peter went back up to his quarters. He showered like usual, stepped into his night clothes—but when he looked up at himself in the mirror, he paused.

Shuri had suggested that he might be able to control it. Consciously, even, now that he knew it was there. It sounded insane, but…didn't he owe it to Tony to try? If this was something that could help him…

Peter ran a hand through his hair, the moisture from his shower making it stick up in all different directions. He was wearing this ratty old shirt with the Midtown Tech logo on it, one positioned directly over where Venom had infected him all that time ago, and he squinted at it. If he concentrated, could he just make the contagion appear? Could he— _control_  it?

Honestly, it felt ridiculous to try. Still, though…Tony's life could be hanging in the balance, here, and he thought that a potential rescue was worth the cost of feeling stupid.

He stepped away from the mirror and went back out into the main rooms. He had a living room, and with his strength it took no time at all to clear out the couch and the table and everything else. He dragged the circular rug into the middle of the room—the one so thin it was really more of a mat—and regarded it for a moment before convincing himself to sit cross-legged in its center.

_If only Mr. Stark could see me now,_ he thought, feeling the dumbest he'd ever felt as he straightened his spine and tried to let himself relax. He had no idea what he was doing. But whatever it was, he intended to give it his all.

Maybe something like meditation would help? He closed his eyes and let his hands fall to rest lightly on his knees, but he had no clue where to start. Was clearing his mind a thing he was supposed to do here? He was pretty sure it was.

He sat there for what felt like hours, just trying to focus on nothing but the contagion and calling it to the surface. But nothing happened, and so he was left sitting there feeling like an idiot.

_Come on,_ he thought.  _Are you in there? Come out! Shuri thinks I can control you, so prove her right or get lost!_

There was no response, though, because of course the contagion didn't have a conscious mind with which to speak. Peter squeezed his eyes shut even harder and tried to concentrate.

_There has to be a trick to it,_ he thought.  _A trigger word, some kind of strong emotion, or…something I'm not thinking of._

Hadn't Shuri said that the contagion only appeared when he thought his life was in danger? The stuff from earlier had already retreated back into his skin, but if he could get it to come out again then there was a chance he could start figuring out how to control it.

…There was only one problem with that plan. For it to work, he'd have to convince himself that he was in serious danger. And how exactly was he supposed to do that? Just ask Shuri to turn a gun on him again?

_I just need to think I'm in danger,_ Peter reminded himself.  _Something as simple as a nightmare could cause it to appear, so why don't I just try to give myself one?_

He had a feeling that it wouldn't be hard. He had nightmares pretty often anyway, and he still had time to sneak in a horror movie or something before he had to go to bed.

He put on a horror movie.

This was officially the stupidest thing he'd ever done.

Once the movie was over, he flooded himself with a bunch of those scary videos online that had used to give him nightmares when he was younger. But they weren't as scary as he remembered them, and watching some fictional serial killer whack a bunch of campers wasn't nearly as terrifying when he'd seen the real thing, so eventually he was left just staring down at his lap and feeling sorry for himself.

When he fell asleep, he didn't dream.

 

* * *

 

"So," Peter said the next morning. "I kind of need a way to put my life in danger without  _actually_  putting it in danger."

Shuri stopped what she was doing. "I'm sorry…what?"

"Well, I'm trying to do the whole 'controlling my powers' thing, but I think I need to activate them before I can even start doing that. You said that the only time the contagion came out was when I felt like my life was in danger, and I tried to give myself nightmares to trick it into showing up, but that didn't work so now I think I have to come up with some other option."

"I see," Shuri said slowly. "So you need a way to be in danger without truly having your life threatened."

"Yeah. And I'm not really sure how to make that happen. It's always been an accident before, y'know? And I don't know how to do it intentionally."

"That would be the problem, yes."

Peter groaned, letting his head fall down against the kitchen table. He felt like a caged animal, sitting there while the Avengers fought against HYDRA. There had been no contact from them, so he wasn't sure what stage they were at in the battle. For all he knew, they were rescuing Tony as he sat there doing nothing.

Shuri turned down the heat on the stove and picked up a spoon to stir whatever was cooking in that large pot. Some kind of stew, Peter thought. "Then we need to find a way to convince your subconscious mind that your life is in danger. I could pull another gun on you, if you like."

"Yeah," Peter said, "but that only worked the first time because it caught me so off guard. Now I'll know it's coming, and I know you won't hurt me."

"Won't I?"

He shook his head. "Nice try, but I'm one hundred percent certain that I'm safe around you."

"Hmm." She stopped stirring. "That…is quite the show of trust. And though I'm saddened that I won't be able to help you by repeating last night's performance, I'm still glad that you find reassurance in my company."

Peter snorted, "You could just try 'thank you.' It's a lot less confusing than what you just said."

She quirked a smile and reached for some kind of weird herb, peppering it into the pot. "Noted. Now, the issue becomes how to do what has to be done. We need to bring the contagion to the surface, and we need a safe way of doing it. I imagine it won't be incredibly difficult to convince your subconscious mind that your life is at risk."

"How?"

"Well," she said, "how long has it been since you've gone out on a patrol?"

He blinked. "It's been ages. Mr. Stark doesn't like them much, especially not since the whole Venom thing, and I've been too busy with real missions to just go out and look for trouble."

"Perhaps you should. Now here, taste!" She shoved the spoon in his direction, and he took an obedient sip of the soup she'd prepared.

He blinked in surprise. "Wow, Shuri, this is amazing!"

"Family recipe," she said with a wink. "Now, how about that patrol?"

"Oh, but…what if something goes wrong? What if a dizzy spell hits in the middle of combat and I go down?"

She shrugged. "If you're so worried, I'll come along."

"I can't ask you to—"

"You're not asking. I'm offering. What, did you think I was some helpless little girl who never left the lab? I'm more than capable of defending myself  _and_  you, if necessary."

"No, no—sorry! I just…I've never seen you with a weapon."

"That's because I haven't needed one while in your presence."

A bowl was plunked down on the table, and Peter jumped as a spoon was shoved into his hand. "Eat!" Shuri demanded. "If you're going out tonight, you'll need the energy."

He didn't protest.

After eating, Peter went and trained again. Shuri was down in the other lab, the one Bruce normally used, working on something. Probably the gauntlet, since no one was quite sure where Tony had put the purple stone before he'd vanished. The two of them worked for hours, until finally the sun dipped below the horizon and it was prime time for patrolling.

It only took Peter a minute to suit up. He held the module to his chest, pressed the top, and the nanotechnology fitted itself around him like a glove. He made sure the canisters were snug in his webshooters, put up his mask, and went to wait for Shuri.

"Sorry for the wait!" she called at last, jogging down the hallway leading to the compound's exit. "I haven't put any of this on in a while."

Peter looked up. Then he looked again, because  _wow._ That was a super sweet outfit. The body armor had to be of Wakandan design, all elegant lines and muted blues and yellows. And geez, what were those things on her hands? Like, mechanical gloves?

"They're vibranium gauntlets," she said, seeing his wide-eyed expression. "They harness sonic energy, which I then use against my enemies. And  _this_  is Wakandan armor. Very light and incredibly strong. It's laced with vibranium."

"It's incredible," Peter said, blown away by how  _light_ it all looked. As light as his own suit, to be sure, and so much stronger. "I have vibranium mesh in my gloves, but that's all."

The corners of her lips curved upward. "Perhaps I can help with that, once all of this is said and done."

"Yes please! I mean—if Mr. Stark is okay with you altering his design."

"Let's worry about that once you have him back," Shuri said. "For now, let's get going on that patrol. I'll admit, I'm excited to see more of your city!"

He opened the doors of the compound and stepped out into the cool night air. "Well, it's probably not going to be a very first impression. We  _are_  going out to find the seedy underbelly of New York, after all."

"Such a shame. Perhaps I'll have to stick around for a while after this mess concludes, to take in the sights. If you'd have me, that is."

"Of course I would," he said, looking back at her in surprise. "I could show you around Queens, if you want! School kind of starts in like, four or five days, so I'd be in the area."

"Four or five days?" Shuri echoed. "You're not giving yourself much time to finish this mission and get back to Queens."

"My school district isn't giving me much time," he muttered. "But we're getting off track. Let's get out there."

The compound wasn't exactly in the middle of a bustling metropolis, so it took a while for the two of them to get back into the city. Once they did, Peter started listening for their first target.

"Normally I swing around so I have a higher chance of hearing something," he said as they slunk between buildings and down alleyways. "But you don't really have webshooters, and I'm pretty sure if I tried to carry you you'd smack me."

"I would do no such thing!" she protested, laughing. "Though I would be more comfortable taking my  _own_ mode of transportation." She raised a hand, pressing at something on her gauntlet, and a minute later there was the sound of revving engines.

Peter's eyes went wide. "You—you have a motorcycle!"

"Not quite." But it sure as hell looked like one, just with that elegant Wakandan flair. Shuri swung a leg over the seat and pushed herself upright. She messed with something around her neck and the next moment a helmet was just  _there._  When she reached for the handlebars, her gauntlets hooked into them. The whole bike lit up. "I thought it wise to bring it with me, just in case something like this occurred."

"Not very stealthy," Peter said, though he was so awed that he barely got the words out.

She quirked a smile and flicked a switch, all the lights dimming to a manageable level. "There. Now you take the lead, and I'll make sure I don't fall behind."

He didn't need to be told twice. He raised an arm, flicked his wrist, and then he was off.

Flying through the crisp night air, he almost felt normal again. Like he wasn't out here to almost get himself killed. When he closed his eyes for the most imperceptible of moments, his hearing sharpened and it was like nothing had changed. Like he was back in Queens in his homemade ensemble, with Aunt May waiting for him in their tiny apartment. Like he'd just take the suit off and go back to being Peter Parker, and the two wouldn't overlap too much.

It was nice, until he opened his eyes and remembered who he was now, and what he had to do.

"Hear anything?" Shuri called through the coms.

He shook his head, landing briefly on the top of a building. "Not yet. Sometimes it can take a while before—"

_Bang!_

"…Before that."


	8. Conquer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost forgot it was Monday! That would have been a weird one to explain. 
> 
> Also, I've decided that after this story I'm going to take a break from this series. I have two more stories partially planned which WILL come out in due time (because honestly, take one look at my profile and you can tell I'm not the type to leave things unfinished), but posting this volume of work in such a short amount of time is finally taking its toll, and I need to recharge so I can deliver the best content possible. This story will still conclude as planned, but I am really looking forward to some time off after it's over, especially with the school year about to start up again. 
> 
> Thanks for the support and understanding, as always, and happy reading!

As things progressed, Tony learned what HYDRA wanted. He also learned that they were still really good at torturing people, which wasn't very fun.

They wanted a lot of things. Probably the same things they'd wanted from Bucky. Things like security codes and overrides and all the dirty little secrets that kept the compound a safe place. Tony could guess what they were after—not just the lives of the Avengers, but the gauntlet that had been taken from them.

They were  _really_ interested in the gauntlet. Wanted to know where it was, if they'd gotten it to work, what they were using it for. It  _had_  belonged to HYDRA originally, after all, and it sounded like they wanted nothing more than to get it back.

Well. That wasn't going to happen.

That was what he told himself. He told himself again and again, endlessly, until during one session there was the prick of a needle at his arm and everything just… _ended._

He lost himself. When he regained awareness, his interrogator was holding a notebook with every security code, every protocol, every little trick that would let HYDRA infiltrate the compound. The location of the gauntlet, but not the stone. They didn't know about the stone.

They  _did_  know about what had happened to the Venom project. Tony hoped Peter wasn't in the base when they attacked.

He hoped Peter wasn't anywhere near this mess.

But that was all he had the energy to hope, as there was another prick at his arm and another wash of dizziness, and he was out.

 

* * *

 

"Stay back!" Peter called to Shuri, making his way to the source of the gunshot. "Only jump in if I'm actually in danger."

"Noted." Shuri's bike turned off to one side, where she set one foot on the ground and waited. "I'll be waiting for your call."

"Hopefully you won't get it." Peter pulled himself up on top of the nearest building and cocked his head, listening hard. There—he heard something like a scuffle between two men, one of them holding the gun that had gone off a few moments prior.

_Did you hear that?_ he thought at the contagion hidden away in his body.  _There was a gunshot! And that guy has a real gun! Isn't that scary? Don't you want to come out and help me deal with it?_

But the contagion made no appearance. Peter rolled his eyes, attached a web to the rooftop, and dropped into the alleyway.

"Hey, guys!"

Two men, just like he'd suspected. One of them—the victim, he was pretty sure—yelped and staggered back, arms raised as if to stop another gunshot. The other raised the gun, aimed it at Peter's head, and pulled the trigger.

_Oh no you don't!_ Peter reached up and pulled the same move he'd used on those HYDRA agents, sealing his hand around the muzzle of the gun and catching the bullet. He squeezed, the barrel crumpled, and he threw it to one side. After that it was just a matter of webbing the guy up and putting out a signal for the police to come pick the guy up.

_So?_ He poked at his chest.  _Nothing? Come on, that didn't feel even a little life threatening?_

Shuri snorted through the coms, "I'm assuming that didn't spark anything?"

"No. It's just—it's too  _easy_. I've gone up against Venom and a ton of HYDRA goons, and compared to them this just feels like nothing."

"So you need more of a challenge," she murmured. "Very well."

There was a strange pause.

"Um…Shuri?"

"Don't worry, Peter, I'm—"

A horridly loud sound boomed from the street where Shuri's bike was parked. An explosion.

_"Shuri!"_

Peter scrambled back out of the alleyway to see a plume of smoke rising from the bike, which was tipped over and sparking on the sidewalk. Shuri was nowhere to be found.

Blind with panic, he tore over to the bike and searched for any clue as to what had happened. But there was nothing, not even a scrap of cloth, so he whipped around wildly in hopes of seeing or hearing something that could help. "Shuri?" he called, voice tight. "Shuri, are you—are you there? Are you okay?"

There was no response. But down the street, Peter's sharp eyes caught the barest flicker of movement.

_Got you._

Peter shot a web at a building, flicked his wrist, and landed hard in front of the movement. "I know you're there!" he yelled into the alleyway. "Come out and tell me what you did to my friend!"

Again, there was nothing. Just another flicker of movement, the sound of metal grinding on metal, and then a blast of energy whistling past his head.

_Woah!_ Peter lurched out of the way, putting his hands up as the energy nearly smashed right into his head. Another blast followed, then another, and he scrambled up the wall to avoid being knocked to the ground. He couldn't see the person clearly, but they packed a punch.

Was it HYDRA? Had they returned to the city to capture the rest of the Avengers?

"This would be so much easier if you'd just surrender!" he yelled, letting himself fall a few feet as the person tried to shoot him again. "Come on—I'm going to beat you anyway, so just— _hey!"_

There was a mechanical whirr, and then this terrible sound was being fired right at him. A high-pitched, shrieking thing, one that got into his very bones and made him  _scream._

He was on the ground in an instant, hands over his ears, but it didn't help. Vaguely he remembered that Venom had  _hated_ sounds like this one, and that it was a weakness that had transferred to him upon injection.

The figure moved closer. Cloaked in a black body suit, holding some kind of weapon that was emitting the horrible sound. They aimed the weapon directly at his head and held it there.

Peter struggled to move. The figure was drawing closer, the sound was getting more and more intense, and—oh god, was that a knife?

Panic seared through him. That was a knife, and he couldn't move, and he was probably going to get stabbed. And even though he healed fast, if he took a knife to the throat then that was it. Game over.

_Calm down, calm down, you have to think!_

Then he paused.  _Wait—don't calm down, get scared! Get really, really scared and then the contagion will come out and maybe you can use it to help save Shuri!_

The figure raised the knife, and there was this explosion of heat and panic and desperation and then  _energy._

Peter kicked as hard as he could, which wasn't hard with the sound piercing straight to the center of his being, and the figure was caught off balance. The gun swerved away, Peter shot an arm out, and a web covered the muzzle before it could start broadcasting again. Another web glued the figure's legs to the ground, then the arms, and then he was stepping back and panting and realizing that his entire front was drenched. But not with blood.

He ignored the contagion for now, advancing on the figure with his webshooters pointed outward. "Where is Shuri?" he demanded.

But the figure didn't look alarmed. They  _laughed,_ something high and strangely familiar, and then the black body suit was peeling away and retracting into a module meant to house nanotechnology.

Shuri smiled at him, black tech giving way to her Wakandan armor, and pointed a finger at the gun Peter had kicked to the ground. When he turned, he saw that it had reverted back into one of the gauntlets she'd been wearing at the beginning of the night

He stared. "I'm sorry— _what?"_

She laughed again, a cheery, exhilarated sound. "That was fun! Ah, but forgive me—you said you needed more of a challenge, so I decided to give you one! I am sorry for the scare, and for hurting you, but I needed to be convincing."

"But—the bike!"

"It's fine," she said, amused. "It wasn't a real explosion, just a sound I caused with my gauntlets and a plume of smoke from one of  _these_." She held up a tiny metal ball. "I used nanotechnology to create a black bodysuit and to alter the appearance of my gauntlets, and then I retreated into the alleyway and waited for you!"

"But I—you could have—!" he spluttered, but he couldn't seem to get out a full sentence.

"It worked, did it not?"

He looked down at his chest, remembering the wet, sticky sensation, and saw that the front of his suit was drenched with the contagion. When he looked back to Shuri, she was grinning. "Remind me to never,  _ever_ get on your bad side," he said, heart still pounding in the wake of the battle.

"I wouldn't worry about it. Now, the contagion!"

_Right._ He dabbed at it with his fingers. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I told you," she said, "I have no idea! It should listen to you, so just do what feels right."

"I'm just not sure what it can do, or even what I should ask it to do!"

"Use your instincts."

He shook his head, staring at the stuff. "Okay, so like…it's another appendage, I need to think about it like it's another appendage. Now— _move!"_

It decidedly did not move.

He groaned. "Shuri, I feel dumb."

"Do you need me to turn my back?"

"Wha—no, you don't have to do that! Just give me a minute, I can do this."

_I can do this._

Peter took a deep, slow breath. The contagion was a part of him now, and so he had control over it. It was going to listen to him whether it liked it or not, and he was going to make it  _move_.

_Just like learning how to walk again._ He closed his eyes and reached. There was a pool of the stuff clinging to his chest and his stomach, and he focused as hard as he could on moving it just a little.

_Where do you want me to go?_

He recoiled like he'd been shot. "A—a voice! Shuri, a voice, there was a voice—!"

She was at his side in a heartbeat, hands on his shoulders, keeping him steady. "It's okay," she soothed. "The gel doesn't have a mind; if there's a voice it belongs to you."

"But—I heard it!"

"I know you did, but you need to stay calm and understand that it's just  _you_. It's a part of your subconscious. Maybe you should respond to it."

"If it's Venom, though…"

"I assure you that it isn't. Venom is gone, of this I am certain."

He wasn't so sure. But he trusted Shuri; she'd saved his life once before and he was sure she'd do it again. So he took another deep breath, tried to calm his nerves, and answered the voice's question.

_Um, hey—strange voice? I want you to spread out and cover my left arm._

Peter felt it. A hot, creeping sensation along his arm as the wetness spread beneath his suit. The contagion was seeping through his skin, gathering where he'd indicated, and his heart thumped in building alarm as his command was heard and obeyed.

Shuri's eyes went wide. "Peter," she whispered.

He didn't want to look down, afraid that he'd be covered in black. But when he finally convinced himself to tip his head, he saw nothing but a thick, oily goop all along his left arm.

"I want to test something," Shuri said, awed. "Can I test something?"

"Um—yeah, sure, go for it."

Shuri reached out, putting a hand on his wrist. Then she raised her knife, gingerly, and set the blade to his forearm. When she pressed, nothing gave. The knife couldn't cut through the goop or the fabric beneath.

"Extraordinary," she breathed, drawing the knife away. "But if I try with the other arm…"

"Ouch!" Peter yelped as the knife made a tiny cut on his unprotected arm. "That hurt!"

Shuri lowered the knife. " _Incredible_. Are you controlling it?"

"Kind of? I mean, I think."

"Make it do something else!"

"I'll try, but I'm not sure how long it'll listen to me. It never has before!"

"Well," she said, "maybe it wasn't fully integrated until now."

He frowned. "Yeah…now that you mention it, there is a lot more than there ever has been previously. And I haven't had a dizzy spell in a while, so maybe it's over! Maybe the stuff has finally settled in."

"Which would mean it's prepared to obey you," Shuri realized. "Peter, this could be an incredible weapon! If you can learn to use it in combat, there will be no one that can best you."

"Yeah," he muttered, "but I have to learn how to control it first."

"It seems to be listening well enough. Make it move again, go on!"

_Okay. Hey, can you cover my other arm too?_

It didn't move.

Peter looked up, alarmed. "It's not listening anymore."

"Then get control of it! Don't ask,  _command!"_

"Okay, okay…" He tried to reach for the contagion again, tried to get it under control.  _Cover my other arm_ now!

It bubbled, hesitated, and began to seep down over his other arm.

Shuri laughed, "Peter, you're doing it! You're controlling it!"

"Well—kind of!" He still had a long way to go, but this was at least a start. It was the beginnings of an understanding. Before long, maybe he'd be able to trigger the response at will—or keep it from happening altogether. "Now how do I make it go away?"

Shuri blinked like she hadn't even considered making it go away. "I'm not sure. Can you just do the opposite of what you did to get it to appear?"

"Like, lower my heart rate and calm down?"

"Something like that, yes."

He thought about the contagion retreating back into his skin and immediately felt sick to his stomach. But no, the contagion was a part of him now. It had made a home in his blood, and he just had to get used to the fact that it wasn't going away anytime soon. And if he could control it, who knew? It could turn out to be his greatest weapon.

"It's working!"

He blinked, looked down, and saw that the contagion was steadily seeping back into his body.  _Woah…I didn't even tell it to do that! It just responded to—something. Something I was feeling, or…_

Something clicked. "Emotion," he said.

"What?" Shuri asked with a frown.

"It's—it's  _emotion_ , Shuri! It responds to fear by coming out, and if I'm calm it goes away! Maybe if I can make myself feel things I can figure out how to really make it listen to me!"

Something sparked in her eyes. "Of course…it makes sense! The trick will be to simulate those emotions without truly being in danger, so you can practice later on."

It was easier said than done, but Peter knew he could figure it out. Now that he understood the trick, it was just a matter of making it work for him.

"Come on," Shuri said, gesturing back toward the street. "We've done enough for one night, and you have a lot to work with. When we get back, let's see if you can't make the contagion make a reappearance."

He nodded, feeling more relaxed than he had in a long time. "Yeah," he said. "Let's do that."

The two of them left the alleyway and went back to the bike, which was standing perfectly upright as if nothing had happened. Then she slid into the seat, Peter aimed his webshooters at the nearest building, and they were on their way back.

 

* * *

 

When the two got back to base, there was a recording waiting on the main computer.

_"Message from Dr. Banner,"_ Friday said when they stepped back into the compound. " _Would you like me to play it?"_

Peter and Shuri exchanged nervous glances. If Bruce was calling, it could either mean that they'd succeeded and they were on their way back, or that something horrible had happened.

He really hoped it wasn't the latter. He hoped that Tony was alive and healthy and on his way back to them. But then again, wouldn't Tony be the one giving the message if that were the case?

"Friday," Peter said, "play the message."

A light on the ceiling lowered, and then there was a projection of Bruce standing in front of them. He looked frazzled. "Hey, guys."

Peter almost responded before he remembered that it was only a recording.

"Yeah, so there's good news and there's bad news," Bruce said. "The good news is that we took the base down. It was a hard fight, but HYDRA headquarters were decimated. The bad news is that Tony wasn't there."

Something cold and awful lodged in Peter's heart. Breathing became difficult.

"Now there are two HYDRA bases left," he went on, "so we're certain he has to be in one of those. We're going to split up now, so we'll hit them both at once and get Tony out as soon as we possibly can.  _Stay put._  Do  _not_  come after us. We don't have Tony now, but you have my word that we'll get him back before anything bad happens."

"You can't know that," Peter whispered. "You can't."

Bruce looked over his shoulder. "Hey, I have to go. Clint took a hit to the side, and I have to help out. I'm not really that kind of doctor, but…you know. We'll be back soon."

The message ended, and Peter was left staring at empty space.

"Not good," Shuri murmured, and Peter agreed wholeheartedly. "Stark has been captured for days now. They don't have time to get to both bases and search them; by now he could be seriously injured."

He knew. Oh, did he know.

Shuri eyed him. There was this thickness to the air, this awful, tense weight that settled on Peter's shoulders and pressed him into the ground. She seemed to be waiting for something, but he wasn't sure what.

"Look, let's…" He trailed off, clearing his throat. He…didn't feel very well all of the sudden. "Let's just get some rest and think about this tomorrow."

Shuri raised a brow. "You're not going to run off immediately in an attempt to rescue Stark?"

He wanted to. But he knew what would happen if he got hurt in the middle of disobeying direct orders. He knew he'd be locked back up in the base forever. Or more accurately, sent back to Queens without the promise of being able to return on the weekends. He'd be off the team,  _again_.

But wouldn't that be worth it if Tony was okay?

Peter turned away before Shuri could see his conflict. No matter what, he wasn't dragging her into this. T'challa hadn't sent his little sister to New York to get hurt or possibly killed during a mission she hadn't signed up for. "Let's rest," he said again. "We can talk about it tomorrow."

She narrowed her eyes, but didn't protest. "Very well. If you make any progress before you sleep, please inform me immediately. I'm quite interested in how your abilities will develop."

He nodded. "Of course."

They parted ways, and Peter ended up right back where he'd been when this whole mess had started—standing in the bathroom, shirt off, examining the spot where the contagion had first emerged.

_Fear,_ he thought.  _Crushing panic. The kind that grips your lungs and won't let you breathe. Remember being crushed under that building? Remember when you had to watch Venom kill those people using your body?_

His heart beat faster, and something beaded at his chest.

_Remember when you looked up at Mr. Stark and knew you were dying, and that you'd never see him again?_

The contagion appeared all at once, dripping down and spreading across his body like a second skin. This time it got all the way over both arms before it stopped.

_Progress,_ Peter thought, raising one arm. The contagion rippled when he moved. When he grabbed for a towel, it didn't stick.  _Strange._

_Can I move it?_ He kept his arm out and focused on the goop sticking to his fingers. And while it could have been his imagination, he thought he saw it ripple just a little.  _Okay, what kind of emotion will make it listen to me now? How about…righteousness? Determination?_

He closed his eyes for a beat and tried to bring up such emotions. He thought of the first time he'd stopped a real crime, when he'd webbed those robbers to the ground and watched from a distance as the police took them away. He thought of moments where he'd felt as if he could never defeat his enemy, only to then strike them down at the last moment. He thought of every single instance where he'd felt  _proud_  of himself.

_Now—move!_

The goop rippled again, shifted, and took shape into nubby claws at the ends of his fingertips. But when he tried to touch them, they melted right back into the rest of the gel. Not solid, then. Not usable. Not yet.

He stepped out of the bathroom and blinked in surprise as he saw how late it was. Definitely time to sleep, if he wanted to be alert for the next day. He had a lot more training to do.

_Calm,_ he told himself.  _Oceans, blue skies, long weekends…you're calm and everything is okay and there's absolutely nothing to fear._

It took a moment. But eventually the contagion bubbled and began to retreat, shifting and creating this awful sensation as it drew back through the skin.

"I did it," Peter said in awe. "I—I did it! I made it show up and then put it back away! And there wasn't a single dizzy spell!" He pumped his fist in the air in triumph. "Oh, shoot—bed! I have to go to bed!"

But it was hard to sleep after that, having come so far in just twenty-four hours. He wasn't sure if he could use the contagion in combat, but now he  _knew_  he would be able to control it eventually. Maybe he'd even be able to use it like Venom had used it.

When Peter got into bed, he spent a long time staring up at the ceiling with a smile on his face. Tony was still gone, and learning to use his powers didn't change that. But at the very least, when he came back it would be to good news. After all, the last time Peter had seen Tony, he hadn't even known if the dizzy spells and the reappearance of the contagion was going to spell imminent death.

Late into the night, smile still on his face, Peter closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

 

* * *

 

_Click._

Peter jolted awake seemingly for no reason, sometime in the middle of the night. For a long while he wasn't sure what had drawn him back to consciousness, as he stared blankly into the darkness and frowned. All he knew was that one moment he'd been sleeping, and the next he hadnt, and now he was confused and exhausted and a little nervous.  _Something_  had awoken him, after all. Maybe something bad.

Peter opted to lie very still for a moment, hoping to hear whatever had woken him up. He had a bad feeling. Not quite his senses going off, but more like a tiny prickle of paranoia.

_Click._

He tensed. Was that Shuri, walking down the hallway outside?

_Click, click._

No…the footsteps were too heavy. Was Bruce back? Or someone else?

"Karen?" Peter whispered. "Karen, can you tell me what's going on?"

Nothing.

"Karen?"

_Click, click, click._

Peter's breath caught in his throat. The contagion was bubbling below the surface, trying to emerge in response to his fear, but he choked it back.  _No. Not yet._

He kept very still as the clicking continued. Whatever it was, he didn't like it—the hairs on the back of his neck were standing straight up.

There was a light beeping, the sound of the keypad outside his room being manipulated. Tony and Peter himself were the only ones that knew the code, though he knew Shuri could get her hands on it if she wanted, so he wasn't panicking just yet. It could still just be Shuri, trying to test him again.

The door swished open in the other room.

Peter slowly slid out of bed. "Shuri?" he dared to whisper. "Is that you?"

There was nothing. Not a word. Though, as Peter strained his ears, he did pick up the slightest thud of footsteps growing closer.

_Something's wrong._ The contagion tugged again, and this time Peter didn't resist it. It flowed out, covering his arms, and that was enough. He crouched down and readied for a fight.

The footsteps grew ever nearer, and then there was a dark figure in the doorway. Peter couldn't see their face, but he could see their outline—and they were far too large to be Shuri in a body suit. One of the lab technicians, maybe? Or…someone else?

The figure reached for something on their belt, and Peter saw them raising some kind of blaster. Like Shuri's, but not nearly as elegant.

He realized he was in trouble a moment before it happened.

The figure pulled the trigger, and a wave of sonic energy seared through the room in an endless wave.

It was quick. One moment Peter was standing there, the next he was on the ground, and the next the lights were on and there was a large man in a familiar uniform standing over him with a fist cocked.

His vision exploded with white and black and red, and then everything went dark.


	9. Accelerate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've passed the halfway point! I quite like the last half of this story, it was super fun to write and I hope it's just as fun to read.
> 
> Don't hesitate to share your thoughts with me, as always! I love hearing from you guys.

Tony, weakened through he may have been, had a plan.

He wasn't in a very good place. He'd been thrown back into the cell after is last interrogation, and he was still trying to chase the drugs out of his system. He wasn't even sure what he'd been injected with, but he knew it couldn't be good. His head felt fuzzy and his whole body buzzed with feverish warmth, and focusing on anything was difficult—but he knew he had to do just that. His hands shook as he removed the arc reactor from his chest and began to tinker with it.

He'd been working on it for hours. Removing the reactor, messing with the parts of the tech that hadn't been fried in the attack, and then replacing it when he heard footsteps approaching. It was difficult, with his injuries—while HYDRA hadn't rendered him immobile by any means, they also hadn't left him fully intact. There was a plethora of bruises and scrapes over pretty much his entire body, and there was also a nasty set of burns along his forearms and a few good slashes in his chest from where the HYDRA interrogators had gotten desperate. It hadn't worked, though—nothing had worked until the drugs.

Tony shook his head, trying to clear it, and went back to tinkering. He was trying to put together something that could put out a signal, and he actually thought it might be coming together. He'd done more with less, after all, and he  _was_ a genius. A drugged, injured genius, but a genius nonetheless.

_If I can just get this last piece in place, I can send out a signal for the compound to pick up. Assuming anyone's still there after HYDRA got their hands on the access codes, they'll pick it up and follow it right back to the source. Back to_ me _._

His fingers trembled just a bit, but he still managed to maneuver the final wire into its proper place and slot it through to connect with the small metal plate on the other side of the reactor. The whole thing lit up, made a soft, whirring sound as it turned on, and then it was broadcasting.

Or at least, he hoped it was broadcasting. There wouldn't be a way to tell until the Avengers either came for him or didn't.

Tony slotted the arc reactor back into his chest, leaned back against the wall, and waited.

 

* * *

 

Bruce got back to the Avengers compound a few hours later. The rest of the team had sent him back, not needing him to take out the two remaining bases, and so he'd arrived alone.

"Peter, Shuri!" he called when he stepped back into the entrance hall. "I'm back!"

No one answered.

Well, okay—they were probably just down in the lab. He raised his head and said, "Friday, can you give me Peter and Shuri's location?"

No response.

That was when he knew something was wrong.

Bruce stepped carefully through the compound. He knew that he was pretty much invulnerable to any kind of attack someone could launch on him, but he  _really_  wanted to avoid a code green inside the compound. He kept an eye out as he moved, looking for signs of intrusion, but there was nothing.

Until he reached the lab.

Tony's lab was where Friday's control panel was located. And when he got there, it had been completely deactivated. Peter and Shuri were nowhere to be found.

"Friday?" he asked again, rebooting the program. "Can you hear me?"

_"Of course I can year you, Dr. Banner. What seems to be the problem?"_

Did she not know? How could she not know she'd been deactivated? Something wasn't right here.

_"Dr. Banner?"_

He pushed away from the console and ran out of the room, heading for Shuri's quarters first. She'd been given a room on the same level as the lab for convenience, so he got there in no time at all. But when he did, the door was wide open and no one was inside.

It was dark. And when he turned on the lights, he saw what could only be described as a warzone.

Shuri was nowhere to be found. But her bed was flipped over, and the dresser had been knocked down, and there were scorch marks all over the walls. The carpet was half torn up, the mirror in the bathroom was shattered, and everything just looked like it had been in the center of a firefight. It probably had.

Bruce's heart sank low in his chest as he realized what may have happened. If Shuri wasn't there…

He went to check on the lab technicians' quarters next. They were there but unconscious, and he left them there in favor of running to Peter's room. If something happened to him on his watch, Tony would never forgive him. And…Bruce wouldn't forgive himself, either.

He reached Peter's quarters in no time at all, and ran inside without thinking.

It wasn't nearly as torn up as Shuri's quarters had been. Everything was thrown around a little, and there were strange indentations in the shag carpet around the bed that made it look like someone had been lying there. But the bed was in one piece, none of the other furniture had been touched, and Peter—

Peter was gone.

Bruce had to fight the rising swell of panic in his throat. "Friday? I don't suppose you have any info on the kids vanishing…?"

_"Negative, Dr. Banner. They should still be in their beds."_

Okay, so something was definitely wrong with Friday. He'd figure it out. But first, the lab technicians.

Hours later, when he got them to talk, he learned the truth.

Men in dark uniforms. Men that had crept in and disabled security and gotten their hands on both Peter and Shuri.

HYDRA agents.

Bruce contacted the team immediately.

 

* * *

 

Peter regained consciousness slowly.

Everything felt… _scrambled._ Like he'd been hit with something really, really hard, and now he was trying to piece his brain back together. His senses were all mixed up, and he couldn't tell where he was or what was going on or even if he was still breathing.

What…had  _happened_ to him? He remembered fighting Shuri in the alleyway, remembered going home and going to bed, but after that…nothing. Everything had just been wiped away.

The longer he stayed there, lying wherever he'd ended up, the more his chest tightened and he had a bad, bad feeling that something awful had occurred. The buzzing ache in his entire body told him that much.

"…er? Peter, wake up! I know you're injured, but this is not the time to give up!"

Injured? Was he injured? Oh, god, he could believe that he was injured. Everything  _hurt._ What had he been hit with?

"Come on…come on, Peter! Please, wake up! I need your strength!"

The voice clicked, and Peter tried and failed to move. "S-Shuri?" he managed. His eyes opened a little, but everything was a blur.

"Yes! Yes, it's me! You have to focus, okay? Look at me!"

"W-what…?" He tried to look up again, but his head felt like it was made of lead. By the time he got his eyes level with the source of the voice, everything was becoming just a little sharper—but not sharp enough. He knew the dark blur in the corner was Shuri, but he couldn't make out anything about her. He couldn't tell if she was hurt, or where she was. Where  _they_  were.

The blur moved, then stopped. Like she couldn't move any further. "You were hit with a wave of sonic energy," she said urgently. "Like the stuff that comes out of my gauntlets, but far more concentrated and far more deadly—especially to someone containing a fragment of Venom, for whom sonic energy was his only weakness. You're going to be okay, but you have to focus!"

_Focus._ Right…he could do that.

He squinted and forced his eyes to fix on Shuri's face. She looked scared but relieved, and his scrambled mind sluggishly put together that she was scared because she was chained to that wall, and relieved because he'd woken up.

Wait— _chained to a wall?_

Peter jolted, and his whole body ached in protest. Oh, god—his  _head_. When he tried to cradle it with his hands, he was met with resistance that he couldn't seem to break. Chains, locked tight around his wrists.

"Vibranium," Shuri whispered. "I don't know how they got their hands on it, but the chains are serving their purpose. I can't break mine either."

"Where…?" He trailed off, lips refusing to form the words.

Shuri leaned toward him imploringly. "We are in a HYDRA base," she said. "We were taken from our beds and brought here, where we are now captives. I'm fine, but as we speak you are being subdued by a low grade sonic frequency being fed through that headset."

Headset? What headset?

He turned his head, and something shifted around his ears. Oh— _that_  headset.

"I don't know how they disabled security," Shuri said. "I don't know how they got in without being detected. But we're here now, and no one knows we were taken, and we have to find a way out. Can you use Venom?"

"I…" He tried to focus, but now that he was becoming more and more aware he could hear the endless droning in his ears, this high-pitched wail that Shuri probably couldn't even detect, and it was killing him. He couldn't think straight. "I-I can't…"

Shuri's expression turned grim. "They know about you, Peter. I don't understand how, but they know that the frequency will keep you down. You have to fight back, find a way to break the chains and escape! It's the only way to get out."

The world spun. Darkness edged at his vision.

"Peter,  _no_ —don't lose consciousness!"

"H-hurts," he managed around what felt like a mouthful of cotton. "S-Shuri, are we…?"

"We'll be fine," she said fiercely, though that hadn't been what he'd been asking. "They'll want us as bargaining chips, so they won't kill us. Though…I fear what might happen to you if you face prolonged exposure to that  _sound_. The contagion is the only thing keeping your internal organs in place, and if you were to lose it…"

He didn't want to think about it. In fact, he  _couldn't_  think about it. The sound kicked up a little in intensity, and the dark, damp interior of the prison cell faded around him for just a moment. When he came back, Shuri was yelling.

"Stark could be here, awaiting rescue!" she called. "Will you really give up so soon and allow him to perish? You are  _Spider-Man_ —a powerful, skilled superhero that has the abilities to free him and save yourself! So please, do just that!"

Something about those words stuck in his brain. Save Tony. Save Mr. Stark.

Save himself.

He tried to concentrate. If he could call the contagion, it might be able to seep up and help him slip from the cuffs around his wrists. But it refused to respond, even though panic was thick in the back of his throat. The sound was keeping it from forming, and keeping his intense strength at bay. He only had his old abilities, and no matter how much he struggled he couldn't seem to break through the chains.

Shuri seemed to sense it. "We have to escape," she insisted. "Peter—we don't know how much of that energy you can handle before the contagion rejects you as a host and leaves you to die!"

He didn't know either, and he really didn't want to find out. But unless they thought of something, there wasn't going to be a choice.

He struggled, the frequency pitched higher, and everything washed with white.

Peter couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard the doors opening as he was hanging there in abject agony. He was in too much pain to comprehend what was happening, but he thought he was being grabbed and tugged forward, wrists free of the chains, and pulled out of the room. Then new cuffs, a new room, and then nothing.

He blacked out.

 

* * *

 

The HYDRA agents returned to Tony's cell what could have been minutes or hours later, weapons in hand. By now Tony knew the routine, and he glared openly at them as they drew close and unlocked him from the wall. The arc reactor was still glowing dimly, putting out the signal, but it was disguised by the material of his shirt. Hopefully the Avengers had received it by now, and were on their way.

One of the agents shoved him forward, the muzzle of a gun jamming into the back of his neck. "If you try to run, we kill you." As if he didn't already know.

_What else do they want from me?_ Tony was led through the same hallways as all the other times, wrists cuffed behind him. He couldn't come up with what HYDRA wanted. They had the access codes; what else did they think they could get out of him? If they wanted to use him as a bargaining chip, they didn't have to move him from cell to cell.

"In," one of the guards commanded, pushing him through another door. When Tony looked up, he saw that they were standing in a small lab. In the time it took him to take it all in, the other guard had dipped down and locked cuffs around his ankles. Not chained to each other, but to metal pegs in the ground—and soon his wrists followed suit. He had free use of his hands, but leaving the room would be impossible.

"What is this?" Tony asked, looking between the guards. But they did nothing but stand there and aim their weapons at him. Frustrated, Tony turned his gaze back on the lab table in front of him. "If you want me to do something, you should actually  _put_  something on the table."

Still, there was no response. There were footsteps outside the door, though, and a moment later there was what looked like a commanding officer walking into the room with a wrapped parcel in his hands.

The man said nothing, just set the parcel on the lab table and took a step back.

Tony raised a brow. "A present? For me? You shouldn't have." But it was only to hide the way his muscles were locking up with nervousness. He had no idea what he was dealing with here, and he didn't like it. For all he knew, there was a bomb in that box.

The commanding officer narrowed his eyes. "We made a visit to your home last night, to retrieve what was taken from us."

His eyes flicked down to the package.

"Open it," the man encouraged.

He didn't trust it. But there were guns trained on him from every angle, so Tony reached out and gingerly pulled back the lid of the box. And inside…

The gauntlet. The one Steve had stolen from HYDRA. The one with the tiny chip of yellow stone in the middle, the one that read exactly like the Tesseract and Loki's scepter and the purple stone they'd retrieved from the man in the crashed spacecraft.

There was no telling what HYDRA could do with that kind of power.

Oh, wait—there  _was_ , because they'd tried it in the past.

Tony snapped his gaze up to the commanding officer, who was watching him with a vicious smile. "What is this?" he repeated, tone venomous.

"You know what it is," the officer said.

He did—which meant he also knew that Steve was the only one that could use it in its current state. It burned anyone that handled it except for him. The only reason Tony could touch it was because Steve had given express permission, and the gauntlet had accepted. Which…wow, okay, sounded more than a little crazy.

"What," Tony guessed, "can't handle your own toys?"

The officer snarled. "You know full well that none of our men can handle it. But you…"

Tony looked down. His hand was on the gauntlet, and he hadn't even realized it.  _Well, so much for pretending I couldn't touch it._ "What do you want?"

"You know what we want—to be able to use our greatest weapon! We can't handle it ourselves, but you seem to have a way with it just as we suspected."

"Still not telling me  _specifically_  what you want me to do."

"I want you to make it  _work_  for us!" the officer roared. "That gauntlet has incredible power, and we want to harness it! We want to use it to destroy our enemies!"

Tony kept his expression flat. "Well as convincing as that is, I wouldn't even know where to start." Which was a lie. He'd studied that exact concept, and he'd even managed it with the purple stone and the arc reactor. Could it be so different with the gauntlet?

The officer wasn't convinced. "You're lying. We asked you, under the influence of the drug, whether or not you could harness the gauntlet's energy. You claimed that it was not just possible, but  _easy_. We can give you whatever equipment you need. Wire the gauntlet so that we can use its energy for ourselves!"

Tony had to think fast. He'd been in this exact situation before, back when the Nine Rings had tried to force him into making missiles for them. All he had to do was gather the parts, assemble some kind of weapon for himself under the pretense of working on the gauntlet, and then he could use that weapon to escape. It would be exactly like the first time he'd created the Iron Man suit. And this time, he didn't have an assistant hanging around that might die in the crossfire.

His was the only life at immediate risk. He could deal with that.

"Well?" the officer snapped.

Tony stepped up to the lab table and said, "Fine. But after this, you let me walk." Because he needed a pretense, needed to make it look like he was doing this out of fear for his own life, needed to make them believe there wasn't an alternate plan. HYDRA couldn't catch on. If the Avengers never showed up, he would need a way out—and this was his best bet.

The officer smirked. "We'll see."

Tony picked up the gauntlet and turned it over as if thinking about what parts he'd need. "Okay, listen up and I'll tell you what I need to get this thing off the ground. You'll need to grab—"

"Oh, Mr. Stark, I'm not quite finished."

He tensed.

The officer waved a hand at one of the guards, and he vanished through the doorway.

"What?" Tony asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach. "What is it, what's going on?"

"Just…a little motivation."

There were more footsteps outside the door. But this time they were halting, moving in bursts—and this time there was a whole lot of yelling.

"Let me  _go,_ you vile cultist! You may have me down now, but I will regain the upper hand and then you will feel the full force of Wakandan weaponry!"

_Oh, no…_

The door was kicked in, and then Shuri was being dragged into the room with her hands cuffed tight behind her back. She was in civilian clothing, like she'd been resting when she'd been taken, and Tony had the sinking suspicion that HYDRA had raided the compound for more than just the gauntlet.

Shuri's eyes met his, and her expression lifted. "Stark—you're alive! And here, which is less than ideal, but still—hey!" She was pushed forward, held by a hand to the back of the neck, and knocked to the ground. In the span of time it took her to get back on her knees, her hands—still behind her back—were bound to the floor with a short chain so she couldn't rise.

This was  _not_  good. With Shuri here, he couldn't carry out his plan. If he even tried, she'd be tortured or even killed. He was just thankful that she was the only one, that everyone else had been out of the compound when HYDRA had hit it.

The officer didn't seem pleased, though. "Where's the other one?"

_Other one?_

"On his way," the guard said. "But sir, we're having some issues with the headset. Keeping it at such levels for an extended period of time threatens to kill—!"

"I don't care  _what_  happens to the child," the officer snarled, low and dangerous. "All we're interested in is what's inside him, so  _let_  him die if the need arises!"

Something settled in the pit of Tony's stomach. Something dark and sour and nauseating.

There was only one person on the team that these men would be calling a  _child_.

More movement in the doorway. Then two guards, each holding their charge by one shoulder, and a body was being thrown to the ground at Tony's feet.

His blood ran cold as his worst fears were confirmed.  _Peter._

One guard bound Peter to the ground just as they'd done to Shuri. He…didn't look good. He was unconscious, for one, and there was this weird headset securely fastened at his temples. Tony didn't know what its purpose was, but it couldn't be good. Especially not if the guard was trying to warn his commanding officer that it could cause  _death_.

Said commanding officer offered Tony a nasty smirk, crossing his arms over his chest. "In case you were thinking of trying anything," he explained. "Even if you manage to save yourself, you have my word that my men will kill the children before you can reach them."

"Sounds like they'll die before that," Tony said tensely. "What was that guy saying about the headset being kept at too high a level?"

"That's none of your concern," the officer said.

Tony bristled. "No, I think it  _is_  my concern. If he dies, you can forget about me helping you with the gauntlet!"

"Such empty threats," the officer sighed. "But still…" He waved a hand at the guard standing closest to Peter's limp form. "Turn down the headset."

Tony watched carefully as the guard fiddled with the headset, trying to figure out how it worked and what was happening. He thought the man was turning some kind of dial, probably  _turning it down_ —whatever that meant—so Peter didn't die from whatever it was doing to him. Ultimately he learned nothing, as the creases in Peter's expression lessened just slightly and he seemed to stop seizing up.

"You'll want to hurry," the officer said, nudging Peter's body with one of his filthy boots. "If we feel you're working too slow, I'll make sure it's turned up even higher than before."

_But what is that thing? What's going on here?_

The man turned for the door. "I know exactly what equipment you need, so I'll have it sent to you immediately. In the meantime…we'll be watching."

Then he was gone, the guards filing out in his wake, and Tony was left alone with Shuri and Peter.

There was this moment, thick with tension and fear and hopelessness, where Tony and Shuri just stared at each other. Neither was quite sure where to start, which questions to ask, what to explain first. But Tony broke before long, because Peter wasn't waking up and he had to know what was going on.

"Shuri—"

"Stark—!"

They both broke off, voices overlapping in the beginnings of their explanations.

Shuri huffed, "It's good to know you survived. Though I'll admit, this reunion isn't taking place under the best of circumstances."

"You could say that," Tony said, shooting Peter a glance. He still wasn't moving. "Is he okay? What happened?"

She winced. "Sonic energy, being played at a volume that normal humans can't hear. The pieces of Venom within him are causing him to respond negatively to the stimulus."

Of  _course_ —that was what had taken Venom down in the first place, and now it was being used to keep Peter down, too. He swallowed hard, beating back the panic that was making a serious attempt to take his breath away. He couldn't afford to be afraid right now. Not while Peter was lying there, in pain and awaiting rescue that Tony wasn't even sure he could provide. "We need to get the headset off," he said, keeping his tone perfectly level. "I'm assuming you can't reach?"

Shuri made an attempt, but Peter was chained just a few feet too far away. And while he was unconscious, he couldn't do anything to help. "I'm sorry," she said, "but there's nothing I can do. If we could get the headset off and give him time to recover, I think he could break free and get us all out of here. But with things as they stand…"

Tony looked back over at Peter, feeling a jab of regret and guilt in his chest. If he hadn't gotten hit during that mission, he never would have been captured and then none of them would be trapped in some distant HYDRA base without a real plan of escape. It was his fault they'd ended up here.

"Okay," he said, though it was anything but. "We'll figure it out. I just need to wait for them to bring me the supplies, and then I can make something to help him."

Shuri said nothing, but these tense lines appeared around her eyes that made Tony think she was trying not to break. She was terrified, he realized. It was hard to remember, because she was so fiercely intelligent, but she was still the same age as Peter. Still a kid. And now she was here, being held hostage so Tony would wire HYDRA enough power to wipe out an entire nation.

"Hey."

She looked at him, tense.

"It's going to be okay," he promised. "Peter's going to wake up, and we're all going to get out of here. So while we're waiting, why don't you tell me what's been going on outside?"

It was meant to be a distraction for both of them, and Shuri seemed to know it. As she began to speak, her voice grew more and more steady. "S.H.I.E.L.D…they found Peter unconscious and half dead outside that base in Canada. He would have been done for, but luckily for him the contagion kept him strong enough to make it back to me. I removed the shrapnel lodged in his stomach. He took care of the rest."

So that's what had happened after Tony was knocked out. He'd hardly dared to wonder if Peter had lived through that battle, if he'd been injured beyond repair or captured or otherwise harmed. Now he knew, and it was only marginally better than having no clue—because now he was imagining Peter, hurt and defenseless and bleeding out on the ground as his mentor was shuttled off by HYDRA. He was imagining Shuri leaning over him and trying to remove the chunks of shrapnel from his flesh, determined but terrified because she knew his life was in her hands.

_I did this to you,_ he thought, eyes flicking from Peter to Shuri and back again.  _I made you go through that without me, all because I got hit. If I'd been there, I could have prevented all of this._

Shuri inched back until she could rest against the wall. She suddenly looked very small. "Things…got worse after that. You'll want to hear it from Peter, but he's had further problems with his strength, and now…" She trailed off. "Well, it's a long story."

"We've got time."

"Not enough for me to explain everything. Trust me, Stark, things have happened that were hard for even me to grasp."

He stared, suspicious. "Then you'd better start talking now. Is—is Peter okay?"

"If we get out of this? He will be."

Tony opened his mouth to ask something else, but before he could, the doors were swinging open and a set of guards were moving back into the room. Equipment was piled high in their arms, all types of machinery and other helpful trinkets.

"Get to work," snapped that same commanding officer from before. "If we suspect you're plotting something, we'll kill those two in the blink of an eye."

He glared at the man, but there was nothing he could do and he  _knew_  it. The man smirked at him, turned, and left. Even the guards filed out, but Tony had no doubt they were being watched. HYDRA wasn't quite that dumb.

"If you can get that headset off, Peter can break all of our chains," Shuri said the instant they were gone. "I don't care how you do it, just get it done."

Tony looked down at the mess of equipment on the lab table. He could probably find some way to get the headset off, but that wouldn't solve all their problems. He'd still be without a suit, for one, and Peter wouldn't have one either.

"We need suits," he said finally, already sorting through the tech. "And they'll be able to tell if I start building something as large as that."

Shuri looked at him like he was an idiot, which was nothing new, and said, "You don't need to build your suit. You just need a way to call it."

_Of course._ Tony looked at the equipment through new eyes, trying to figure out how he could do just that. He'd modified his arc reactor to put out a signal to the Avengers, so if he could just tweak that signal to call one of his suits…

It was possible. But there was only one problem.

"My arc reactor is busted," he said, tapping at the center of his chest. "I can call a suit, but I can't call another reactor to power it."

"Your suits aren't fitted with reactors preemptively?" Shuri asked, narrowing her eyes.

He shook his head. "All of my suits are designed to draw power from the arc reactor in my chest, so there was never a need for that."

"Well…" Shuri trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words. Then, "Let's worry about that when the time comes. For now, work on calling at least Peter's suit."

Tony already had an idea. He reached a hand under his shirt to pop the reactor out and set it on the table, turning it around and beginning to fiddle with tech that was maintaining the signal. "He'll need that suit as much as I will," he said. "Without it, his strength will be totally out of control."

"Actually," Shuri said, "controlling his strength is no longer an issue."

He put down the reactor. "What, seriously? I leave for two seconds and suddenly he gets control of powers he's been struggling with for weeks?"

"So it would seem." She smiled, smug. "As I said, Tony Stark, much has changed in the past few days. More than is my business to explain, surely."

He risked a glance at Peter, but he hadn't moved. "Then let's hope the kid wakes up soon."

Tony got to work.


	10. Destiny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this isn't my best work, but I just worked a twelve hour day and I'm about to drop dead. I'm even too tired to use exclamation marks.
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, friends.

"We have to move fast," Steve said, standing in yet another conference call full of holograms. Bruce had just told them about the compound being broken into, about the absence of Peter and Shuri, and they all knew they couldn't waste time.

Not when the gauntlet was gone as well.

"There are two bases left," Wanda said, gesturing to the map in the middle of the room. "One in the American Midwest—the one Peter and Tony were planning to hit next—and one all the way in Nepal. The three of them could be at either base, so I propose we split up."

Bruce gave a sharp nod. "We have to find them  _now._ If HYDRA took the gauntlet back we can only assume that they're going to try to use it, and we can't let that happen again."

"They won't be able to touch it," Steve said. "It burns everyone but me, so they won't be able to do much with it."

"But you gave Tony permission to handle it," Natasha reminded him. "He  _can_  touch it, even if HYDRA can't, and that means they probably took Peter and Shuri to threaten Tony into helping them use the gantlet."

"…Which means he'll do it," Steve said, following the train of thought to its logical conclusion. "He won't risk Shuri's life, but Peter's especially. We all know how far he was willing to go to save him during the Venom incident."

Natasha crossed her arms, looking away worriedly. "You're right. If it comes down to getting Peter killed or building HYDRA a weapon of mass destruction, he'll make the weapon. We have to get them out of there before that happens."

"Then we split up," Wanda said again. "Seven of us divided among two bases. Unless you want to get involved again, Dr. Banner, which would bring us up to eight."

Bruce shook his head immediately and insisted, "I should stay here. If I don't, HYDRA could come back and wreck the place."

"Fair enough." Steve looked to Wanda. "You and Vision are with me. We'll take the base in the Midwest, and the rest of you can go to Nepal."

"Hey, now!" Bucky interrupted. "It's more likely that they're in the Midwest, don't you think? Which means we should send four people there instead of just three."

"Fine, then Nat—"

Bucky rolled his eyes. "No, you idiot, I'm going with you. You need another guy on your team, and I know HYDRA better than anyone."

"Ah," Steve said, a smile on his face. "Of course it should be you."

Natasha raised a hand. "Hang on, that leaves us with a pretty unequal distribution of power. We need at least one heavy hitter."

"Come on, Nat, I'm offended!" Clint put a hand over his heart in mock offense, saying, "We could totally take the base down on our own; with Sam on our side too it'll be a breeze!"

"I'm with Cap, actually," Sam said. "Send Vision with us, and Nat can go with you."

"Deal," Natasha said before anyone could respond. "Let's move out now, before Tony has the chance to give HYDRA a superweapon."

Clint pouted, "Aw, Nat, you're going to leave behind one half of the dynamic duo?"

"Clint, drop it. This is serious."

He shrank back a little, defeated. "Geez, sorry…Just trying to lighten the mood."

"Save it for after we have Tony and the kids back." Steve stepped away, reaching for his communicator. "We have to get on the road. Everyone, stay in contact. We'll see each other soon."

The holograms flickered off one by one, and Bruce was left standing in an empty room in an empty compound. There was nothing for him to do but wait there, hoping that everyone returned in one piece.

He went back to the lab, but there wasn't much to do. The power stone was still hidden off wherever Tony had put it, the gauntlet was gone, and Shuri seemed like she had Peter's situation all figured out. All he could do was stand around and—

_"Dr. Banner, something has occurred that you'll probably want to know about."_

He nearly jumped out of his skin as Friday's voice sounded over the intercoms. He'd gotten the AI turned back on, but she'd been so quiet that he'd forgotten she even existed. Without Tony around, she didn't speak very often.

_"Dr. Banner?"_

"Yeah, yeah," he said quickly. "What is it?"

_"Our guest's heart rate has risen, and his brain waves appear to be spiking. It's set off several protocols set in place by Mr. Stark to warn him when our guest's return to consciousness became imminent."_

Bruce froze. "Return to—Friday, are you talking about the space guy that crashed in our front yard? He's going to wake up?"

_"Affirmative. His vitals are spiking higher and higher as we speak."_

Bruce was sprinting out of the room before Friday could continue, running for where their guest had been locked away. It was in a separate room of the lab, completely contained. They hadn't known if the man would be hostile once he regained consciousness.

He got there a minute later, typing in the code to the isolated cell and stepping into the room. The man was lying there, dressed in a light green hospital gown. The clothes he'd crashed in—that red leather coat that reached all the way down to his ankles, that dusty, singed shirt and jeans beneath—were folded neatly at the end of his bed. His weapons were outside the cell, tucked into one of the cabinets.

Bruce walked over to the monitors. Sure enough, they were going crazy. The guy would wake up any moment.

Then the moment was there.

Bruce stepped back as the spaceman gasped, body rippling like a wave, muscles tensing against the restraints. His eyes snapped open, wide and terrified. He turned his head from side to side in a desperate search for his captors—and then he saw Bruce.

The man jolted against his restraints, alarmed. "Who—who the hell are you? Where am I? What is this place? Where…" He trailed off, a new kind of horror gripping his features. "Where is Gamora?" Then, even more horrified, "Where is the power stone?"

He kept asking questions, and Bruce's eyes got wider and wider with every passing moment.

This…was going to take a while.

 

* * *

 

"Do you mind if I ask you something?"

Tony glanced up briefly from his work. He was in the middle of working on the gauntlet, since HYDRA was watching and he had to act like he was making progress. But beside it, half hidden under the clutter, was the arc reactor. He was making good time, adding bits and pieces and trying to figure out how to get the right signal out. He thought he might be getting at least a little close.

"Sure," he said, realizing that he'd left Shuri hanging for a few moments too long. "What do you want to know?"

She shuffled a little closer, as far as the chains would let her before she had to stop. She was kneeling, hands clasped in her lap, watching Tony work. "This may be a strange question," she said, eyes never leaving his work, "but what exactly is your relation to Peter?"

He stopped. "What?"

"I've always been curious." She looked down at her clasped hands. "You were so worried for him when he was brought to me all those weeks ago, like without him your world would be brought down around you. And now I'm seeing it again, this…this  _connection_. I would assume you were his father, but you look nothing alike. So what is he to you, exactly?"

_He's the kid I nearly got killed,_ Tony thought, refusing to spare Peter another glance because that would be the tenth one in the last ten minutes and he needed to focus. Not that it was easy, when he still wouldn't wake up. None of this was easy.

"Stark…?"

He swallowed hard and decided, "He's my son."

Shuri blinked. "But you don't look—"

"Come on," he said, "you're a genius so you should know what I mean. The kid's not  _literally_  related to me, but…it feels like he should be. He—he means everything to me. Pepper and him, they're my whole world. If either of them died because of something I did…" He trailed off with a shiver.

Shuri nodded slowly, seeming to understand. "My father is dead," she said quietly, "but you knew that."

He winced guiltily. He was more than aware that Shuri's father more than likely wouldn't have been killed if he hadn't been at that assembly—the assembly that had been called because of the Avengers. It wasn't really any of their fault, not directly, but Tony would always feel responsible.

"I feel the weight of his death as if I were the one who orchestrated it," she went on. "I tried to convince him to wear something under his suit that I designed just for him, something that would save his life if anything were to happen, but he refused. In the end, the explosion would have killed him just the same. But I still feel the guilt. Guilt for what, I'm not quite sure—because no matter what I designed, no matter what he wore, he would have died just the same." She looked up at him, gaze steady. "Perhaps it's not the best comparison, but…what I'm trying to say is that I understand what you're feeling. My father didn't die because of me. But if he had, I can't imagine how my pain might be amplified."

He appreciated the thought, he really did. Because the thought of Pepper or Peter dying was a constant buzz in the back of his brain, and it had just gotten worse with every mission, every upgrade to Peter's suit, every new enemy made.

It was especially bad now, as one of the two most important people in his life lay unconscious before him.

"He won't die because of you," Shuri said, following his gaze to Peter. "And neither will your fiancée. We're going to get out of here."

"Yeah, well…" Tony went back to focusing on his work. "Let's see if I can call a suit before we make any assumptions."

Shuri nodded silently and went back to watching him.

Hours later, Tony finished what he'd been working on.

"Here," he said, leaning down and sliding the tiny contraption across the floor. With any luck it would be too tiny for HYDRA's gritty security cameras to pick up on.

Shuri frowned, subtly scooping up the device and turning it over in her hands. "What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing special," he replied. "Just a disrupter that should, with any luck, get the kid back on his feet."

"You do realize I'm the same age as  _the_   _kid_ , right?"

He flashed her a smile, tight though it may have been, and went back to explaining. "Aim it at him and press the button," he said. "We won't be able to hear it, but I've set it to a frequency that should disrupt the headset. It won't last long, but with any luck Peter can regain his head and break out of the cuffs before it starts up again. He can tear off the headset and then free us."

"And do you have a plan for after that happens?" Shuri asked with a frown. "You don't have the transmitter ready to call one of your suits,  _or_  Peter's."

"I don't have a plan, but we'll figure it out. I just—I have to get that headset off, okay? I have to get Peter conscious."

"We can't," Shuri said, putting the device in her lap. "I want him to wake up just as badly as you, but you have to understand that waking him up must be the  _last_  step of our plan. If it isn't, HYDRA will see him awaken and know that something is amiss with the headset. They'll come in to fix it, and you won't have your suit to stop them."

_We'll be right back where we started,_ Tony realized. Shuri was right—they needed to wait until they had the tech to call their suits. But that didn't make it any easier to stand there working, knowing that he had the ability to wake Peter up at any moment and that he simply wasn't allowed to do so.

"I'll work faster," Tony said, already focusing on the reactor. He was so  _close_ , if he could just work out a few more hitches in the tech…

But still, what would he do once he got the transmitter online? It was like he'd said—none of his combat-functional suits would have arc reactors built in. He could call a suit, but it wouldn't work without a power source.

Despite the issue, he kept hard at work. Minute by minute, stopping often to pretend to make progress on the gauntlet, getting closer and closer to his goal. He wished, not for the first time, that he could actually  _use_  the gauntlet instead of only being able to touch it. If Steve had been there, he could have taken it up and busted them out without breaking a sweat. But he wasn't. It was just Tony and Shuri and Peter, and they had to find a way out on their own.

"I wish I could help," Shuri said, frustrated. "Being chained here, it's… _infuriating_."

"Sounds like you did enough, saving Peter's life twice." Tony tweaked one of the wires in the reactor, feeding it through to a different port, and his eyes lit up as the transmitter sparked. Not online, but close. "Now it's my turn to save the two of you."

He adjusted the wire again. And then, like a miracle, the transmitter went online.

Tony had to keep himself from giving any sign of his triumph, just in case the security cameras were picking up what he was doing. He had to look like he was working on the gauntlet.

Shuri looked up, gaze sharp as the telltale hum of the transmitter filled the room. "You did it," she said. "It's working."

"Broadcasting, yeah, but not calling anything. I need to adjust the frequency and code some stuff into the reactor. But like I said, none of my suits have reactors built in. I'm not sure what to call."

"Peter's suit, to start," Shuri said. "His doesn't need to be powered by a busted reactor in his chest."

Tony tried to focus. He remembered exactly what codes would release Peter's suit from the compound and send it jettisoning for their location, and he put that code in and waited as the transmitter accepted it. "The kid's suit is on its way."

Shuri frowned. "Just how fast are your rockets, Stark? If they're anything like your transport planes, that suit won't reach us for hours."

"I have no idea where we are," Tony said simply, and it was true. He'd tried to figure it out, but he couldn't even tell if they were in the states or outside them. He was flying blind. "If we're close, it could be here in minutes. If not…well, hours wouldn't be that far off."

"So we have no idea," she said with a humorless smile. "Perfect."

"Look, just…" He waved a hand in her direction. "Keep that disruptor handy. We have to be prepared for when the suit busts in here. No point in getting the suit if Peter won't wake up, right?"

"Right. Now, work on calling one of your suits."

"I told you, there isn't one that has a reactor built into the—!"

Shuri smacked her open palm on the ground, the high, sharp sound echoing through the cell. "Tony Stark, you are supposed to be one of the highest minds of the scientific community! Are you honestly telling me that not  _one_  of your suits has something you could use to power it from outside?"

"No, otherwise I would have…" He trailed off suddenly. Now that he was thinking about it…there was exactly one suit in his arsenal that had a power source built into the suit itself. A highly dangerous, highly untested suit that had the potential to fry whoever wore it.

The suit containing that mysterious purple stone.

The one Pepper had made him promise to stop working on.

It was insane. It was crazy to even  _think_  about. But it was the only suit he could think of that wasn't powered by the reactor in his chest, but by the stone and reactor combo built into the outside. If he called it, they had a chance. He  _needed_ that suit.

"I like that look in your eyes," Shuri said, watching him intently. "It's radiating crazy…and we could use a little of that right about now."

"Yeah, well…" He reached for the transmitter and started to change the codes. "Let's see if you're still sure about that once the crazy actually shows up."

She raised a brow. "Care to enlighten me beforehand?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Just a super powerful untested death suit that uses an energy source that crash landed here in a pod from an actual alien spacecraft."

Shuri sat back against the wall. If her hands had been free, Tony was sure she'd be covering her face in disbelief. "Stark…tell me you're not talking about that purple stone Dr. Banner asked me to run tests on."

"That's the one." And it was a terrible, awful idea. That was an untested suit that could very well kill the person wearing it. He knew that. But if Peter was going to be weakened due to prolonged exposure to that high-pitched frequency, and Shuri wasn't going to have her armor or her weapons, they needed that suit. Even if the Avengers were on their way, they didn't have the time to wait for them. They had to make a bid for escape, and it had to happen soon. It was only a matter of time before HYDRA realized what Tony was up to, and then he'd have to work with a gun to the kids' heads and he wouldn't have a choice but to follow their orders.

This was the only way.

"I'm going to call the suit here," Tony said, "but I won't have to use it if the Avengers get here in time."

"Let's hope for that, then," Shuri murmured. She looked unnerved, considering the very possible future in which Tony used a possibly deadly suit to help them escape.

Tony took a deep breath and altered the signal to call his suit.

 

* * *

 

"We're approaching the base now," Natasha called from the cockpit, the plane whistling quick and silent through the night sky. "We'll hit the drop zone in one minute."

Steve nodded, adjusting his suit and making sure his shield was strapped firmly to his back. This was a high stakes mission. There could be no mistakes, otherwise they could be dealing with the deaths of three teammates—two of them still children. And what would Wakanda think if they let T'challa's little sister die while under their protection?

_High stakes,_ he thought again, casting a grim look out the window to the dark desert below. For once HYDRA had chosen to build somewhere other than a damp, humid forest, and so it was dry and freezing cold and flat aside from the rolling dunes. The base was a short ways away, but they needed to approach on the ground to avoid being spotted. They would drop into the desert and perform an ambush. If everything went well, they could get inside without causing a stir.

"Drop point in ten," Natasha said, stepping out of the cockpit and letting autopilot do the work for her. "Remember, we're here to be stealthy. Once we get in, we can tear through these idiots—but do  _not_  blow our cover before then."

The others nodded, gathering up in preparation to leap from the plane. They didn't have long.

"In three, two, one…jump!"

One by one, they dropped out of the plane. They were low enough to the ground that Steve didn't need to take a parachute, instead rolling in the soft sand and coming up as the others approached.

"Show off," Bucky teased, unbuckling his harness and leaving the parachute in the sand. Behind him, Wanda hit the ground in a cloud of scarlet. Natasha drifted down beside her a moment later, shedding her parachute and shooting Steve and Wanda a jealous look.

"I hate that you don't have to wear one of those," she said, stepping away from the cloth and crunching through the sand to Steve's position.

Steve laughed and looked to the horizon, due east. "The base is that way, so let's get moving. Everyone, stay low and stay quiet."

They started their trek. It was freezing cold during the night, and Steve shivered as they trudged between sand dunes and kept a sharp eye in the direction of the base. Above them, heavy clouds were covering the moon and making the landscape even darker than it was already was. Good for cover, bad for their own visibility.

"There's a storm coming," Bucky murmured, and Steve shivered for a different reason as he remembered the last time those words had come out of his friend's mouth. "Hopefully it shields us from view."

Steve gave a silent nod and kept moving. They could only hope that they wouldn't be spotted, that they would find the base where it was supposed to be, and that Tony, Peter, and Shuri would still be alive once they got in. And of course, that was if they were there at all. They could be at the base in Nepal, in which case it was out of their hands.

They walked for what felt like hours. It was hard work, trudging through the sand with the wind whipping the grains up all around them, but it had to be done. And as the moon reached its highest point, peeking out from a crack in the clouds, Steve looked up and saw something different among the endless fields of sand.

"Hey," he whispered, holding up a hand to stop the other Avengers. "Do you guys see that lip in the sand?"

Everyone drew up behind him and stopped. They were at the top of a dune, and below stretched a massive expanse of flat sand. Flat except for one thing, of course—the barely visible ledge that formed a large circle on the desert floor.

"That," Natasha said in a low voice, "looks like a secret base. It's sunken beneath the sand."

Steve nodded, tracing the outline with his eyes. There had to be some way of raising the base from the inside, which would grant access to returning HYDRA agents.

"How do we get in?" Bucky asked. "I'm sure there's a way to open a hatch or something from inside that thing, but what about from outside it? Will we just trigger their alarms if we try to get in?"

"We might have to drop stealth, if that's the case." Wanda crept to the edge of the dune and peered down at the outline, eyes narrowed in concentration. "I can try to pull it up with my powers, and then we can storm the entrance. We can't afford to just sit here and wait for someone to raise the base so we can sneak in. Our teammates could already be dying."

"Couldn't agree more," Bucky said, looking to Steve for affirmation.

He gave it readily. "You're right. Wanda, why don't you see if you can get a read on how massive this thing is? If you can move it, that's the way we should try to get in."

Wanda nodded and stepped back, stance widening as her hands raised in the direction of the underground structure. She took a deep breath, flexed her fingers, and then a sharp wave of scarlet energy was washing across the desert and rippling into the sand. She closed her eyes, frowning as the sand jolted around the edges of the structure. Like she'd made an attempt to lift it, but it wasn't working.

"Wanda?" Steve asked, concerned.

She shook her head, lowering her arms and opening her eyes. Her expression was one of shock and awe. "Rogers," she whispered, "the base is bigger than anything I've ever seen."

He stopped. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's huge," she reiterated, taking a step back. "There are hundreds of bodies in there, filling a multi-story structure that recedes into the depths of the earth. I'm getting…fifty stories? Sixty? I'm not sure, the end drops out of my range."

"How is that possible? This base was marked as minor; it shouldn't be that big!"

Wanda just shook her head and said, "I don't know what to tell you. The base is massive, and there are more agents here than in the base that was supposedly their main site of operations."

"A front?" Bucky guessed.

"More than likely, yes."

Steve was stricken with this sick, tense feeling as he realized what that meant. "We'll be in over our heads."

The others started talking, but Steve was no longer listening. He was looking at that base and wondering what to do. They would need help to take it down, but Tony and the others needed their help  _now._

The rest of the Avengers would never make it in time.

"Nat," he said, "call the others and tell them to get here immediately. If this is their real headquarters, Tony and the others will be here."

Natasha didn't question it. She stepped away, raised a hand to her earpiece, and started talking.

"What's the plan?" Bucky asked, crouching at the crest of the dune.

"I—I don't know. Wanda, do you think you can lift that thing enough for us to sneak inside?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure. It's massive, and there appears to be a mechanism holding it forcibly underground for the purpose of deterring that exact plan. We may need to give them incentive to come outside, so that we can penetrate their defenses."

"Just like in Germany," Steve said. "Lure a few out, steal their uniforms, sneak on in?"

"Somehow I'm not sure it will be that simple, with hundreds of troops hiding in that thing. But we can try."

"That's all we can do." Steve stepped over the top of the dune and slid down. The others were behind him, skidding until the sand leveled out and they were standing at the lip of the base.

Steve stepped tentatively onto the covered base. The texture of the ground was firmer, the result of metal hidden beneath a layer of sand, and he reached down and brushed a hand through the stuff to clear it. Beneath was a rusted metal roof, unbecoming of the massive structure hidden beneath it. It was cool to the touch and ragged.

"I've got it," Wanda said before he could ask. She raised a hand, and all the sand on the roof of the structure rose and fled off to one side. They were left standing on the rusty material.

"Well this is only slightly terrifying," Natasha quipped. "It seems huge even from up here."

"Wanda," Steve said, "now would be the time to lift it."

She shot him a look. "And after it's been lifted? What then?"

"Well…" He trailed off, eyes on the roof. "Let's just wing it from there."

The corners of her lips quirked upward. "Of course."

She reached out, eyes sparking with scarlet, and the base began to lift.


	11. Assault

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a classic maneuver, I edited this chapter early and then forgot to post it.

Steve watched in awe as the whole roof sparked with that signature red energy, a low, metallic whining coming from deep within the earth as Wanda gripped the base and attempted to pull it up. Anyone inside the base would think it was just a minor earthquake, but everyone on the outside knew the truth.

Wanda's brow wrinkled as she pressed her palms to the roof. The sand shifted just barely as the base inched upward.

"We only need a few feet to create an opening," Steve said, though he wasn't sure she was listening. "If we can spot a door, we can kick it open and get inside."

The others took the hint. Leaving Wanda on the roof, the rest of them dropped down and spread out to search for a door. Steve ran his fingers along the sandy metal as it slowly inched into view, Wanda wrenching it from the earth. He kept expecting to find the beginnings of a doorway. Some kind of seam, or hinge, or keypad. But as the base rose more and more, reaching Steve's knees, then his chest, he saw nothing. Where was the opening? Where could they get in.

"Nothing over here!" Natasha yelled.

"Nothing here, either!" Bucky called. "Steve, how about you?"

"No, nothing." He looked up. "Wanda, lift it more!"

She gasped, the strain of it all showing in the tightness of her voice. "I…I'm not sure if…!"

The entire base groaned and jolted a few inches back into the earth.

"Wanda!"

"I'm okay!" she hissed, straining to lift the base once again. "It's just—it's a lot of weight, and my powers only go so far!"

It jolted again and fell back into the ground. First one inch, then two, until it was sinking as Wanda cried out in an attempt to raise it.

"Something's sucking it down!" she called in explanation, the scarlet slipping from around the metal and retreating back to her fingertips. "They…know we're here."

"They might not," Natasha said, rounding the corner and stepping up onto the roof. "It could just be an automated security mechanism.

The base rumbled. Sirens began to go off far underground.

Steve winced. "Nope, I'm pretty sure they know we're here."

"Fantastic."

The sirens grew louder. Bucky hopped back onto the roof, expression grim. "What's the plan, Steve?"

"Same as it's always been. Get in, save Tony and the kids, get out."

"That easy, huh?"

Steve reached for his shield. "That easy."

They stood back to back and waited for HYDRA to emerge.

 

* * *

 

With the suits on their way, all Tony could do was sit there and pretend to work on the gauntlet.

Well,  _pretend_  probably wasn't the right word. He really was working part of the time, connecting the gauntlet to the generator he'd been provided. The generator would suck up the gauntlet's power and project it into whatever form HYDRA saw fit. A superweapon, most likely. He didn't  _want_  to build it, but he had to convince his captors that he was working. He'd risked enough already, getting the transmitter online.

What had to be hours later, he was beginning to get a little jumpy. His work on the gauntlet was further along than he was comfortable with, and there was no sign of his suit or the Avengers. He was beginning to fear that he was well and truly on his own.

And so of course, that was when the sirens went off.

He felt the base rumble and shift. Then there were the sirens, loud but not piercing, and there was yelling and footsteps outside the lab as agents ran by.

"What's happening?" Shuri asked, eyes wide. "An attack of some kind?"

"Well, if I had to bet…" Tony grinned. "I'd say our friends are beating down the door."

Shuri's expression lit up. "Then we are saved!"

"Just about. Wake Peter, up, then we—"

The door burst open.

For a moment Tony almost expected to see Steve Rogers waltzing in, shield in hand, ready to kick HYDRA's ass and bust them out of there. But then he blinked and realized that no, there was no knight in spangled armor coming to save them. Not yet. What there was, though, was that same commanding officer from earlier and two guards.

"Director Leland," one of the guards was saying, "we have to evacuate before they—!"

"Silence!" The commanding officer—Leland, apparently—struck the goon with the back of his hand and whipped around, a furious leer on his face. "This is our guests' doing, and we're going to make them  _un_ do it."

Tony dropped his tools and stepped away from the table. The arc reactor had been slotted back into his chest, pulsing with dull light as it transmitted. Breaking the signal now wouldn't stop the suits from coming, but he didn't want to risk it. He couldn't let Leland or his guards figure out what was going on.

Leland prowled forward, a dangerous expression on his face that Tony didn't like in the least. "Your friends are outside," he snarled, approaching Tony with deadly intent. "Trying to beat down our door and kill us all. Now, how would they have found the location of our top secret base? Because until we brought your rotting carcass over the threshold, they had no idea we were here!"

Tony set his jaw and took another step back, steeling himself. Now wasn't the time to appear weak. "Nothing to do with me," he said, though he wasn't sure if it was true. Either one of two things had happened: his original signal had gone through and the Avengers had received it, moving to rescue him consequently, or the signal hadn't gone through and they were there because of the map they had of all the HYDRA bases. Either way, it didn't matter. The Avengers were here now.

"Nothing to say?" Leland spat, drawing closer and closer. "Fine, then allow me to fill the silence—I know you did this. I don't know how, but I know you've tampered with the technology we've given you and called your friends straight to us. Now I  _could_ call for a retreat, but seeing as we are now the last remaining strain of HYDRA, I feel it's my duty to make sure you and the rest of your insipid team never leave this place. So…" He raised a hand to the guards, who sprang into action immediately. "Here's how this is going to go. You're going to finish your work on the gauntlet  _now_ , before your team breaks in and kills us all. Once you do, I'm going to use that gauntlet to power a weapon capable of putting down not just the Avenges, but every super-powered urchin that  _dares_  get in our way. Understand?"

Tony laughed at him, despite the sick feeling in his stomach. "That's rich talk, coming from a guy about to be overrun by a bunch of urchins with superpowers."

Leland moved so quickly that Tony didn't have time to react before a fist was cracking into his temple, sending him staggering back against the wall. As he leaned there, gasping, the man growled, "You're going to finish your work on the gauntlet, Tony Stark. If you don't, I can assure you that you won't like the consequences."

_There's no consequence worth building a weapon that kills my team,_ he almost said, before he looked over and saw what the guards were doing.

Shuri tried to struggle, but her cuffs kept her from doing a thing as one of the guards grabbed at the back of her neck and held her head down. The man's other hand pressed the muzzle of a gun into the back of her skull. A few feet away, the other guard was standing over Peter's body and pointing his weapon at his forehead.

They didn't say a thing. They didn't need to.

Leland drew back, letting his bloodied fingers unfurl. "Finish your work," he repeated, expression one of pure, heartless fury. "If it isn't done by the time your friends get inside, I won't just kill the children—I'll torture them and make you watch."

Tony tried to think of something. Some kind of snappy response, a joke to offset the horror of what was happening in front of him. A response that would make things seem not quite so serious. But Peter and Shuri were there with guns to their heads, Peter wasn't even  _conscious_ , and the Avengers on the outside had no idea.

He was the only one that could save the kids. He had to act now.

Tony nodded, once, sharply, and Leland's intense posture deflated.

"Good," the man said. "I'll be leaving my guards with you, in case you try anything funny. And because I know your research well, I'll stay as well to monitor the proceedings. If I see you make  _one_  move that isn't on record as necessary for this procedure, I'll have the children shot."

Tony clenched his jaw. How was he supposed to get out of this one?

Leland stepped back. "Please, begin."

He looked to Shuri as if she could help him, even though he knew she couldn't. She knew it too. When she looked back at him, head tipped forward by the gun held to the back of her head, her expression was dark and hopeless. She understood, as he understood, that there was no other choice.

They both knew that Tony was incapable of letting anyone on his team die.

Anyone other than himself.

Tony took a few careful steps back up to the lab table, Leland watching his every move, and got back to work.

 

* * *

 

"They're not coming out," Wanda observed.

No one answered. They were all standing on the roof of the base and waiting for it to rise and spit out the first wave of HYDRA agents. But the longer they stood there, the longer Steve had to realize that HYDRA wasn't interested in attacking.

He lowered his shield. "They're waiting for something," he said.

Natasha huffed, "Why face a team of superheroes when you could hide in an impenetrable fortress and torture your captives?"

Steve gritted his teeth and finally stepped out of formation, accepting that HYDRA wasn't on the attack. They were hiding. Because really, they were evil but they weren't  _stupid._ They had to have seen the way the Avengers had decimated the other bases, and they weren't going to make the same mistake.

"What are they waiting for?" Bucky asked impatiently, clicking the safety back on and lowering his gun.

"The gauntlet," Natasha said, and Steve immediately knew she was right. "They're having Tony hook it up to some kind of weapon, and then they're going to use that weapon to wipe us off the face of the earth."

Wanda gave a sharp nod and raised her hands, fingers sparking with scarlet. "Then we have to get in before that happens." She tried again to lift the base, energy rippling down into the sand, but was unable to budge it.

"It's still not working," Steve murmured. "We have to get in some other way, before they can force Tony to connect that weapon."

"But I can't lift it!" Wanda protested, sweat beading at her brow from the effort of it all. "How else can we get inside?"

Bucky knelt down and dragged his fingers through the sand, expression thoughtful. "The obvious way," he said finally. "We dig."

Wanda raised a brow. "Don't lift the base, lift the sand."

"Exactly."

All at once, her expression went from frustrated to hopeful. "I can do that. We'll still need to break down the door once we find it, though, and we'll still need to fight through the base itself to save our teammates."

"Then we'll do just that." Steve stepped off the roof, the others following close behind. "Wanda, lift the sand. We'll look for doors."

She nodded and gestured for them to stand back. Then she reached, sending a wall of red into the sand, and heaved up with all her strength.

The sand whisked up all around the base. Almost immediately the dunes all around them tried to fill in the lost sand, but Wanda raised her other hand and put up a wall around the base to stop that from happening. What was left was a moat around the structure, several yards deep, and Steve, Bucky, and Natasha dropped into it without hesitation

"No doors here!" Natasha reported, Bucky echoing the words a moment later.

Steve called, "Wanda, take us further down!"

She nodded, flexed her fingers, and the sand gave beneath their feet. It was growing firmer now, more packed and damp than the surface sand, but it seemed to offer little resistance as Wanda excavated.

"How long can you hold this?" Steve asked as they began to search the next level.

Wanda shook her head. Her eyes were closed, brow furrowed in concentration. "Not forever. We have to find an entrance soon."

Which wasn't going to be easy, seeing as doors to the outside were typically only on the ground floor and there were fifty some odd floors to dig through.

They kept going. Wanda dug them deeper and deeper, straining more and more to keep the weight of the sand from washing in to suffocate them. For a while Steve wasn't sure if they were going to find any kind of entrance at all.

Then, about twenty stories in, he found it.

A massive steel cylinder appeared in the sand—one of the anchors keeping Wanda from lifting the base. "Hey, guys!"

Natasha and Bucky appeared from the edges of the base, moving to his location.

"Is that what I think it is?" Bucky asked, resting a hand on the cylinder.

"It's a brace," Natasha said, circling the thing. "Is this what's holding the base in the ground?"

Steve corrected, "It's just one of them."

"Then we destroy it." Bucky was already testing the strength of the metal by banging his prosthetic fist against it. "If we get rid of all these cylinders, we can raise the base and get inside."

Steve shot a glance back at Wanda for her input, but she was so busy concentrating that he wasn't even sure she could hear them. He realized abruptly that there was no way she could hold this long enough for them to destroy all the cylinders. Who knew how many there were, or how deep they ran?

Natasha seemed to realize the same thing. "We don't have time for that," she announced, placing her palms to the freezing metal. "If this brace is attached to the interior of the base, maybe we can get in by breaking a hole in it."

"Slip through the inner mechanisms," Steve agreed. "Break whatever we have to, cut a hole right to the inside of the base. It might set off alarms, but at least we'll be inside."

Bucky rapped at the side of the thing. "You really think we can get through this piece of junk?"

"We have to try." Steve took up his shield and struck the brace as hard as he could. The metal dented slightly but didn't give way.

Natasha turned to Wanda as Steve tried again, his shield bouncing off the cylinder to no avail. "Wanda, you can drop all the sand except for what's in the immediate area."

Tension rippled through her like a wave, and sand came crashing down all around them. There was only a small pocket left around them and the cylinder. "Thank god," she gasped. "Sand is heavier than I thought it would be."

"Don't thank anyone just yet," Natasha said. "We need your powers to bust this brace open."

Wanda looked to the brace and nodded. "Barnes, Rogers, step back."

Steve did so immediately, because he knew how terrifying Wanda's powers were and he didn't want to be anywhere near the cylinder when they were in use. Bucky followed suit, and then Wanda was flicking her wrist and there was this high, sharp sound as the metal crumpled and tore away from the base.

The brace lifted, and in its place was a hole that led right into the base.

"You were right," Bucky said. "It's hollow."

Steve raised his shield, denting in the wires and thin metal pipes that made up the innerworkings of the brace. He created a gap big enough to squeeze through and did just that, stepping out into a dark room.

The others followed close behind. The instant they were all in, Wanda pulled the brace back against the base and let the sand come crashing back down. A few grains slipped through the cracks, but it seemed that they were safe from a real flood.

With that taken care of, Steve turned his attention to the base itself.

The room they'd stepped out into was completely dark, until Wanda raised a hand and let the glow of her powers wash over their surroundings. Then Steve saw that they were in some kind of control room specific for that brace, full of buttons and switches and monitoring equipment. The monitor was flashing red, and Steve knew that HYDRA would be able to tell that one of their braces had been tampered with. They'd be sending a team any minute.

There was a door against the far wall, protected by what looked like a fingerprint scanner. HYDRA hadn't missed a thing.

"They'll be sending a team to check on the damaged brace," Steve reasoned, already looking for a hiding place. "We can ambush them, steal their uniforms, and sneak our way down to where Tony and the others are being held."

"Good plan." Bucky began to scan the walls, but had little luck finding anywhere to hide. The room was purposefully built without cover, so intruders couldn't make themselves scarce. "We'll have to hide behind the door when it opens, then kick HYDRA's ass. Good?"

"Good," Steve agreed. "Everyone, get into position."

 

* * *

 

Tony was working as fast as he could.

The suits were on their way, he knew that. But the suits being  _on their way_  was useless while there was a gun pressed to the back of Peter's head and to Shuri's, and so he had no choice but to do as he was told.

He was almost done. In a few more steps, HYDRA would have unlimited access to the gauntlet's power. They wouldn't be able to use the gauntlet itself—even Tony couldn't seem to remove whatever it was that caused the thing to burn whoever touched it—but once he hooked the gauntlet into the generator, they'd be able to siphon as much power as they needed. They'd be able to power a weapon of mass destruction.

Maybe what he was doing was wrong. Maybe, as a champion of the greater good, he was supposed to stand back and let the kids die and then die himself, and then HYDRA wouldn't be able to use the gauntlet at all.

_Maybe_.

But Tony Stark had never been one to let the world tell him what to do, and he wasn't going to start now.

He kept working on the weapon.

_It's fine,_ he told himself as he began to hook up the final components.  _The weapon will go online, but then the suits will get here and we'll break out and destroy it before it can hurt anyone. It'll be fine. It'll be totally, completely fine._

He shot a nervous glance over at the kids. Shuri still had the disruptor hidden in her folded hands, waiting for the suits. Peter was still dead to the world. Both of them still had guns to their heads.

Leland watched coldly as Tony worked. "How close is the gauntlet from being connected?" he demanded.

"Not an exact science, here," Tony said, even though it kind of was. He thought they had maybe three minutes before the gauntlet went online.

"Then give me an estimate."

"Fine—five, maybe ten minutes?" If he could stall a little, then their suits would—

Leland growled, slamming his fist on the lab table and making everyone jump. "Not fast enough! Get it done in two, or I'll kill one of the children."

_He saw right through me,_ Tony realized.  _Am I losing my edge?_

Leland jabbed a finger at the gauntlet, and Tony got back to work. A few more wires, a few more components, and then…

The chip of yellow stone in the center of the gauntlet glowed, a pulse of power whistling through the room, and then the generator was sucking up all the power it wanted. Vaguely, Tony wondered what that generator was intended to power. What kind of weapon were they dealing with, here?

Leland's eyes lit up. He stepped forward, running his fingertips along the generator as it leeched energy from the stone. "Finally," he whispered, never taking his eyes off the thing. He gestured to the guards standing in the doorway and said, "Alert the lab that I will be arriving shortly with the battery."

Tony raised a brow.  _Battery? So that's what they're using the gauntlet to power. Though if this thing is really powered by a battery, that means the battery can run out. It can't run on one charge forever, so if I can get the gauntlet away from them once the suits arrive…_

Leland pressed at something on the front of the generator, just out of sight, and a moment later he was stepping back with something in his hand. Tony couldn't quite tell what, but he could tell that it was  _powerful._ It had to be the vessel holding the power that had been siphoned from the gauntlet, the vessel that would be used to power HYDRA's new weapon.

His stomach sank, the reality of the situation striking him as Leland lifted that battery and stepped back. He'd had to do this. It had been necessary to save Peter and Shuri. But looking at that vile man holding what would soon become a lethal weapon, he was overcome with an all too familiar sense of  _guilt_.

He'd thought he was done creating weapons. Apparently he'd been wrong.

"You got your battery," Tony said, stepping carefully away from the lab table. "So tell your men to get away from the kids."

Leland paused, and for a moment Tony was terrified because he thought Peter and Shuri were about to be killed. But then he smirked, deceitful and slimy, and ordered, "You heard the man. You two, step away from the children."

The guards didn't hesitate. They lowered their weapons and retreated to the entrance of the cell.

Tony could have collapsed out of sheer relief, but he stopped himself. Now wasn't the time to look faint. Not while a superweapon could quite possibly be powered up in the next few minutes.

Leland gestured, and two guards stepped forward. They picked up the generator and the gauntlet, being careful to keep the two connected, and walked it out of the room. "You've served your purpose, Stark—for the moment."

"So you'll let all of us go, right?" he tried weakly.

Leland's smirk widened. "Hardly. I'm sure you'll become useful again soon enough, and the children seem to be the perfect leverage to use against the famed Tony Stark. You'll all be kept here. Don't be afraid, you'll be  _well—"_

The sirens started again. Faint and distant, they wailed.

Leland went stiff as a bone. "Guards! Guards, what's going on?"

Tony couldn't hear the response, but he was intuitive enough to figure out that the Avengers had finally found a way to break into the base. If only they'd arrived a few moments earlier…

"Get me down to the lab,  _now!"_  Leland shrieked, dashing out of the room and slamming the door closed behind him. His voice carried through the closed door all down the hall as he roared, "We have to get the suit up and running immediately! We will  _not_  go down like the other bases!"

Tony tensed.  _Suit?_

The base rumbled as the Avengers presumably wreaked havoc on the inside of the base. Dust rained from the ceiling, tiny pebbles and chunks of concrete accompanying the tremors.

Shuri raised her head. She still looked shaken from having a gun pressed to the back of her skull, but still she shook herself and asked, "Where are those suits?"

It was less of a question than a plea, and Tony shook his head to it. "I don't know. I called them, all we can do is wait."

Her expression hardened. "There's one more thing we can do now." She unfolded her hands, revealing the disruptor, and aimed it in Peter's direction.

"Hang on—!"

She didn't listen. She depressed the activator, and though Tony couldn't hear it he knew a counter frequency was being broadcast directly at the headset. It sparked, blipped, and went dead.

Peter gasped.

Tony moved forward without thinking, as if to take hold of him and keep him from hurting himself in the shock of reawakening. But the chains around his ankles stopped him from getting within five feet of the kid, and so he stood there helplessly and watched as Peter coughed and hacked and shook. He rolled onto one side, shivering, and curled in on himself.

"Peter!" Shuri called, raising her voice to make herself heard over the rumbling from below. "Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

It was everything Tony wanted to ask, but he was frozen.

Peter tried and failed to raise his hands, rubbery limbs straining against the cuffs. He pressed his forehead into his knees as if attempting to soothe some terrible headache. With the amount of time he'd been exposed to that frequency, that was probably exactly what was happening.

"He'll be okay," Shuri tried, though she looked scared. "The guards lowered the frequency, and he wasn't exposed for more than a few hours, and—and he'll be fine, it's just a migraine. He needs a minute to heal."

And though Tony was freaking out a little, he was the adult in this situation so he knew he had to act like it. He took a deep breath and said, "I'm sure he'll be fine," even though he wasn't. "Just give him a minute to regain his head; he had to endure that headset for a long time."

Shuri gave a tense nod.

As the base continued to rumble, Peter continued to struggle. He didn't seem coherent yet, but he obviously knew he was in pain and knew he wanted to get away from that pain. He made these soft, wheezing gasps, gasps that pierced Tony right to the core, continually trying to free his hands and grasp at his head. His eyes were glossy, unseeing, like he wasn't really there, and as Shuri kept talking and he kept failing to respond, Tony quickly came to the realization that Peter couldn't hear.

"Come on, kid," Tony whispered. "Come back to us."

Shuri got to her feet, even though the chains wouldn't let her reach Peter, and took a step forward. "He has to get up  _now_ , Stark. He can break us out of this cell, and we can find a place to hide until your suits arrive."

"Yeah, well tell that to the assholes that put that headset on him." Tony looked down at the chains around his ankles, wondering if there was a way to get them off, but he couldn't think of a single thing that could help.

Peter's head turned like he was following his voice, and hope sparked in Tony's chest.

"Kid! Kid, are you starting to come back? Can you hear me?"

Peter tossed his head a little, fingers unfurling and reaching in Tony's direction. His heart broke a little, seeing his pain, but he refused to let it show. He had to be strong.

Peter was blinking now, repeatedly, and the cloudiness in his eyes was starting to clear. When he pulled against his cuffs this time, they groaned and creaked.

"You're okay," Shuri was saying, over and over again. "You're safe, Peter, come on…can you answer us? Can you—look at us, speak to us,  _anything?"_

It felt like it took forever. The rumbling had stopped, and everything was deathly silent as Peter, slowly but surely, managed to roll onto his stomach and get his arms and legs beneath him. He pushed himself up, a little shakily, and sat there breathlessly as the aftershocks of the headset's awful frequency gripped him. But finally those aftershocks faded—not gone entirely, they probably wouldn't be gone for quite some time—and Peter was blinking at them and gradually beginning to piece together the situation.

"G-guys…?" he rasped finally, eyes wide and surprised. Because of course, he hadn't known Tony would be there. As far as Tony knew, the kid might not even know he was in a HYDRA base. If HYDRA had slid that headset onto him back at the compound, he might not have woken up at all until now.

"You're awake!" Shuri exclaimed. "Peter, we seem to be in a bit of a predicament that could use your strength!"

Peter stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. Then he turned and looked at Tony, like he wasn't sure he was real. "Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah, kid," he said, cursing the restraints around his ankles for the umpteenth time. He wanted nothing more than to be there for Peter, not chained across the room. "I know you're hurting right now, but we could really use your help. Do you think you can break your restraints?"

Peter didn't seem to understand him very clearly, but at the very least he tugged at his bonds distractedly. Tony had no idea how long the aftereffects of the headset were going to last, but he could only hope that at the very least Peter would shake it off enough to break them out.

"Mr. Stark?" Peter asked again, like he'd forgotten he'd asked it the first time. "W-where… I mean, what's g-going on?"

"We're in a HYDRA base," Tony said very, very clearly. "We're trying to escape, but we need your help to do it. Now, we need you to break your restraints. Can you do that for me, Pete?"

Peter squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if trying to dispel his disorientation. The he nodded once, slowly, and pulled at his bonds. Once, twice, three times, until the creaking and groaning of the metal had turned more into a shriek as they tore. He held up his hands silently, the cuffs dangling off them in pieces.

Tony took a moment to be just a little bit scared, because Peter was barely coherent and he'd still torn right through solid steel. But then the moment was gone and he was saying, "Good, kid, you did good. Can you do your ankles next?"

The kid looked down at his ankle restraints like they were a particularly difficult puzzle. Then he reached down and grabbed at them dazedly, very nearly crunching his own ankles as he tore off the restraints. He didn't seem to register that he'd nearly hurt himself, though, looking up instead in search of— _something_. Validation, more instructions, Tony wasn't sure what.

"Good," he repeated. "Now help Shuri out, will you?"

He turned his head as if realizing she was there all over again. Then he paused, raising his hands to his head and groaning in pain. "I…I can't think straight, Mr. Stark."

"I know. But that was a whole sentence you just said, Pete, so you're getting better. Just keep trying to focus, you'll get there."

He gave a shallow nod and made his way over to Shuri. He was far more gentle in breaking her restraints, careful of hurting her as his sense of self began to trickle back in. The instant she was free she sprang up, giving him the hug he so obviously needed.

The touch seemed to bring him back a little. He startled and realized, "We were taken from the compound."

Shuri let him go and stepped back, ushering him toward Tony. "We were," she confirmed. "They put a headset on you that broadcasted a very high-pitched frequency directly into your ears. It disrupted the contagion holding you together, which is why you feel so awful."

"Oh." Peter crossed the room in slow motion until he reached Tony, staring at him for a good minute before realizing what he was supposed to be doing. "That makes sense." He dropped to one knee and grabbed the chains, shattering them with an alarming lack of effort.

"Hey," Tony said, putting his hands on Peter's shoulders as he stood there swaying. "You're going to be okay. You just need to concentrate as hard as you can, okay? Really think about where we are and what's happening."

Peter took this sharp, deep breath and shook his head to dispel the haze. "I'm trying," he rasped, "everything is just so… _fuzzy_."

"You're okay," Tony said again. Then, to Shuri, "we have to get out of here and find a place to hide out until either the suits arrive or the Avengers get their asses down here. I don't suppose you have anything that can get through that fingerprint lock?"

Shuri lowered a hand to her wrist, reaching for a set of beads that had, until now, been completely obscured by the long sleeves of her shirt. She wouldn't have been able to reach them with her wrists locked so tightly behind her back. "I don't have anything graceful, but I do have  _these."_

Tony opened his mouth to ask what the beads were, but before he could ask, two individual beads burst off their string and hit the ground. They shifted, expanded, and a moment later Shuri was picking up two fully-formed gauntlets. They didn't look like the ones she normally used—they were far smaller and a bit ricketier—but for the size of the beads they'd come from, Tony was impressed.

"More nanotech?" he asked.

She adjusted the gauntlets and aimed them at the door. "Yes. They're meant for communication only, but I recently decided to make a few adjustments. It's a work in progress." Then she fired, and two bright bursts of light seared into the fingerprint lock and disabled it. The doors whirred and slid open.

Shuri moved back and gestured to the door. "Ladies first."

Tony huffed in amusement and took Peter by the arm to guide him out of the room. By the time he stepped out into the hallway, Shuri had already neatly dispatched of the guards watching the door of the cell.

As soon as they entered the hallway, Tony could tell just how far underground they were. The air was damp and cold, and everything smelled of earth. The base had gone eerily silent, all explosions and sirens petering out, and it was making Tony feel uneasy. It was far too quiet.

"We have to hide," Shuri said, looking both ways down the hall and choosing a direction. "We have no idea how many agents there are in this building, where we are, how deep underground this level is, or how long it will take for the suits or the Avengers to make it to us."

"I doubt there will be any place left to hide after HYDRA figures out that their gauntlet and their prisoners have gone missing."

"Then let's hope we get the suits back before that happen."

Shuri nodded once and kept moving. Tony followed close behind with one of Peter's arms slung over his shoulder, supporting him just in case he tried to fall over or go the wrong way. He was coming back to himself now, beginning to show a little recognition, and Tony gave him a nudge as the haze in his eyes finally cleared.

"You back with us, kid?" he asked.

Peter withdrew his arm, though he was still swaying a bit, and gave a painful nod. "I—I think so. Still a little fuzzy, but…I think I'll be okay."

Tony settled a hand on his back for just a moment, to make sure he really wasn't about to pitch over. "Do you remember where we are, or what's going on?"

Peter shot him glance and said, "I'd have to be an idiot not to realize where we are, Mr. Stark. Even if I  _didn't_ remember being snatched out of the compound and dragged to a HYDRA base in the middle of nowhere, these guys have a pretty signature aesthetic."

"Aesthetic, huh?" Tony laughed, the first real spark of amusement he'd felt in forever.

Peter just winced. "I've spent too much time in these bases."

Oh, and there went the amusement, replaced by guilt and sorrow. "Hey," he said. "After this, no more HYDRA bases.  _None_."

Peter tried to smile at him, but it came out a little forced. "Promise?"

"Yeah. Yeah, kid, I promise."

Even though he couldn't know for sure.

They kept moving. The base was strangely devoid of agents, and Tony found himself wondering what was going on. Surely HYDRA would want to keep a better eye on their prisoners. Where had all the guards gone?

"This is strange," Shuri said, voicing Tony's thoughts. "Are they so arrogant that they didn't think to leave more than two guards to guard their highly valuable prisoners?"

Tony shook his head. "We have to stay sharp. They could have something up their sleeve, like the incredibly deadly weapon they're planning to power with that battery."

"They called it a suit," Shuri murmured. "Do you think they've devised something like the Iron Man suit?"

Tony peered around the next corner and paused to make sure no one was coming. Then, seeing that the coast was clear, he stepped out into the next hall. "I wouldn't put it past these assholes," he said bitterly. "If they've really found a way of powering a suit with that battery, we're in trouble."

Peter startled a little. "Battery," he said. "What battery?"

It was the first time he'd spoken without being asked a direct question. Tony decided it was progress. "Remember the gauntlet that Cap pulled out of the base in Germany?"

Peter gave a distant nod. "The one with the yellow stone in it? Yeah, I remember."

"That's the one. Well, HYDRA managed to put together a battery to contain a portion of that gauntlet's power. They're going to put it into some kind of weapon and use it on the team."

"Oh." Peter blinked. "Then we have to stop them."

Tony ruffled his hair. "Yeah, we do. But we don't have any weapons right now, and you're too out of it to defend  _anyone_  reliably, so we're going to hide out for a bit. Our suits are on the way here, and the rest of the team is breaking into the base to help us."

He blinked again, slowly. "Okay—HYDRA has a superweapon, and we have to hide and wait for help."

"That's right." Tony spotted a door, the first one not protected by a fingerprint lock, and made for it. With any luck it would be a place to hole up until the team reached them or the suits did. "Shuri, have those gauntlets ready."

She nodded and slid into a defensive stance. "Whatever they throw at us, I'll throw it right back."

He nodded again. Then he threw the door open, looked into the room, and froze.

They were standing in the doorway of what looked like a munitions room, with fifteen some odd HYDRA staring at them in dead, silent shock.

_So much for finding a place to hide and not being spotted._

Shuri reacted first. She shoved Peter and Tony to one side and fired into the munitions room, not aiming to kill but to confuse. The agents scattered in the following explosions.

Tony turned to run, to try and escape while the agents were still in shock. But Peter, in the first show of truly rational thought since the headset had been removed, took a step forward and jabbed his fingers into the metal of the door. He slammed it closed and  _twisted,_ distorting the metal until it wouldn't swing back open—effectively locking the agents in the room.

"Good thinking," Shuri said, already leading them away from the wrecked door. "But they'll definitely have a way of contacting other agents, and then the whole base will know that we've escaped. Stark, your suits had better be here soon."

"And there's still no sign of the Avengers," Peter said. He was finally looking more like his normal self. There was a spark of life behind his eyes. "Mr. Stark, what should we do?"

Both of the kids looked to him, and Tony blanched because he had no idea. He had to come up with something fast. "Okay—here's the plan. We…keep moving! We keep moving and we look for another door and then we hide behind the door until something shows up that can help us."

Shuri raised a brow. "Or," she said, "we can try to arm ourselves and fight our way through. Peter, how are you feeling?"

"I can't hear well," he admitted. "There's this ringing in my ears, and everything feels a little fuzzy, but…" He trailed off, seeing Tony and Shuri's alarm, and quickly changed his tune. "I mean, I'm better! A lot better, actually, I think I can fight now. Do you need me to fight?"

Shuri nodded, though she looked slightly skeptical. "You're our greatest weapon right now. I know you don't have full control of the contagion yet, but if you get the opportunity…"

Tony stopped. "Wait. Full control of what, now?"

Peter cringed and pointedly avoided eye contact, saying, "You really don't want to know. It'll just freak you out."

And yeah, that was only slightly terrifying. But Shuri was already speaking, detailing their plan, so he didn't probe further.

"No hiding," Shuri said. "We heard those explosions from above us, and we know that up is out, so we go up. We blow through anyone in our path, though we should still try to maintain a degree of stealth so we don't end up in battles we can't afford to fight."

"What about the weapon?" Peter asked. "Shouldn't we try to disable it?"

"We'll deal with that when we're back with the team." Shuri kept them moving, in search of stairs or an elevator or  _some_  way up. "For now, let's move."

So that was what they did.


	12. More Canons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't quite been pleased with the last few chapters, so I took an extra hour to pour over this one and I'm quite happy with the results! I hope you guys are too. 
> 
> Don't hesitate to leave a comment if you're enjoying, and thanks for the support! I really appreciate you guys.

Steve finished pulling on the HYDRA uniform he'd stripped off of one of the guards that had been sent to check out the broken brace. The others were already in uniform, making final adjustments and getting ready to leave. The unconscious bodies of the agents had been piled to one side where hopefully they wouldn't be spotted.

"We have to find Tony and the kids and get them back here," Natasha said, swinging the door open and peering out into the base beyond. "Wanda, once we do that you can remove the brace and dig us out."

She nodded. "Could be difficult if we're under fire, but I can do it. We just have to get Tony, Peter, and Shuri back here first."

Steve finished up with his uniform (it was more than a little tight, with his stature) and got moving. The HYDRA base was damp and cold, the result of being far underground, and there were groups of agents patrolling throughout the hallways. Steve was nervous about being spotted at first, but none of the agents seemed to notice.

"There's no telling where they are," Bucky whispered, pulling his sleeve self-consciously down over his metal arm. One of the agents had been wearing a cap, and he'd shoved it down over his head and tucked his hair up. "And this base is huge, so running into them isn't likely."

"I can scan for them," Wanda said, tapping at the side of her head. "I'll tell you if any of them come into range. But even then, there's a margin of error. I can't give an exact location, only an approximation."

Steve ducked his head as a passing agent gave him a second glance. "In a fifty-story base, I think that's good enough."

They kept going, and made it approximately five minutes before they were discovered.

Steve wasn't sure what gave them away. All he knew was that one moment they were walking, blending in, and the next moment there was gunfire and yelling and explosions and he was grabbing his teammates and throwing them behind cover.

"So much for staying undercover!" Bucky yelled, reaching for his gun and slotting it through a tiny gap in the crates they were hiding behind. They were tucked into a narrow hallway, and Steve quickly took the other side and raised his shield to deflect the gunfire coming their way. Bucky started firing back, Wanda raised a hand, and scarlet energy rippled through the corridor. A minute later Bucky was sniping the last agent and putting him down. The damage had been done, though—sirens were wailing.

Steve motioned to the others. "Come on. If we can distance ourselves from this, we might be able to blend back in!"

But that ship was quickly sailing, as more agents appeared on the other side of the hallway. Wanda raised a hand and flung them all to one side, and then they were running.

Then more agents, more gunfire, and the fight began anew.

 

* * *

 

The explosions had begun again.

Peter followed behind Tony and Shuri, trusting them to find a way to the surface. His head was still pounding with the force of the headset's aftershocks, and there was this awful ringing in his ears that made it hard to hear anything.

Well, okay—it more reduced his hearing down to what it had been before he'd been bitten—but compared to his usual sensory input, he felt deaf.

The past hour was a complete blur. He kind of remembered waking up, the horrible dizziness and disorientation, the impossible struggle to stand back up. He kind of remembered not being able to speak or hear or feel anything but debilitating pain. Then the strange feeling of his senses beginning to trickle back in, one by one, bit by bit, until he blinked and was suddenly jogging through a HYDRA base with Tony and Shuri in front of him.

Then it all came back.

They were trapped, and they needed to get out. They were trying to get to the surface and meet the other Avengers, and their suits were on their way.

And Tony was okay. He was okay.

_Now would be a good time for you to show up again,_ he thought at the contagion, but it didn't make a peep. Was it possible that he was  _too_ scared to get it to come out? Or was the headset still having an effect on him, not allowing the gel to emerge? Either way, he wished it would just come out so he could have  _some_  protection. He felt really exposed, running around in his nightclothes.

It was a miracle they hadn't been found yet. Sirens were blaring, and explosions were sounding above them, and agents were running up and down the hallways. The only thing keeping them from being caught was Shuri's quick thinking, as she dragged them around corners and into empty rooms as they all ran by.

"This won't last forever," Shuri whispered as they kept moving. "Someone will see us eventually, and then we'll have to fight. Tony, where are the suits?"

"On their way," he said, tense and nervous. "I don't know how they're going to reach us when we're underground, but let's just hope they get here."

"How comforting," Shuri said blandly. Then, seeing the coast was clear, she led them down the next stretch of hallway. "Peter, I really wish your hearing was working right about now."

Peter winced. "That makes two of us." But the ringing was hanging on, was refusing to let go, and he felt like a little kid again.

Tony's hand on his shoulder brought him back to the present. "Focus," he reminded him, and so that was what he did. He had to shake off the aftershocks as fast as he could. They were in enemy territory; he couldn't afford to be weak.

Finally, Shuri stopped in front of what looked like elevator doors. "This is it," she said. "We have to use this thing to get as far up as we can. Peter, get the doors."

He nodded and stepped forward, pulling the doors open. The elevator shaft was pitch black, and there was no elevator waiting to take them up.

"Climb?" Peter suggested.

"Absolutely not!" Tony protested, pulling him back. "If a car comes down that line, it'll squash you like a bug.

"Then what do we do?"

Tony took a moment to examine the elevator shaft and the cables stretching through it. Then he clicked his fingers and said, "If there's an elevator, there's usually a stairwell nearby. Let's find it."

It didn't take long. They kicked in a few doors, looked in a few rooms, and then Peter was ripping a door off its hinges and stepping onto a  _massive_ stretch of stairs. How large was this place, anyway? It was terrifying.

"You found it!" Shuri exclaimed, walking up behind him.

Peter peered over the edge of the railing and saw nothing but black. Looking up, he saw the same thing. "Guys…this has to be like, HYDRA's main headquarters, right? This is the biggest base I've ever seen!"

"Maybe the base in Germany was a cover." Tony moved into the stairwell and removed the arc reactor from his chest. It was still busted up, but it was managing glowing a little. Tony aimed the glow out in front of them so they didn't fall down the stairs as they began to climb.

"This," Tony said, "is going to suck. I'm getting too old for this."

"Oh, Mr. Stark, you aren't—"

"I mean, my  _knees!_ " he complained. "Jesus, kid, my knees."

Peter caught his smile and returned it with one of his own. An attempt to break the tension, he thought, so they wouldn't drive themselves mad climbing up an endless, poorly-lit staircase. "At least no one is trying to kill us right now," he joked weakly.

"Give it time, kid. Give it time."

Peter shivered and went back to climbing.

There were probably a lot of things he should be telling Tony right about then, as they walked in silence. Things about the time he'd spent honing his powers, coming to the realization that the contagion could be controlled. Things like the fact that the power dampeners in his suit were hurting him. But he just couldn't do it, not right then. Not as they were moving as quickly and quietly as they could through enemy territory, trying to reach the surface and escape with their lives. He'd tell Tony once they were safe.

He tapped at his chest absentmindedly, as if coaxing the contagion to the surface. He would need it, if it came to a fight without his suit's protection. Bullets wouldn't exactly bounce off his skin, but they  _would_  be deflected by the contagion.

Well—hopefully.

"Are you fit to fight?" Shuri asked, though Peter wasn't sure which one of them she was asking.

"I'm okay," Tony threw in. "They—they drugged me a while ago, but it's worn off by now."

"No other wounds?" Shuri pressed. "HYDRA doesn't tend to be kind to their hostages."

Tony just shook his head. "I might have a few scrapes, but it's nothing compared to what it could have been."

But Peter was too busy focusing on the first thing he'd said. "They drugged you?" he repeated. "What was it? Is it going to hurt you long term?"

Another shake of the head. Then, "I don't think so, but I'll have Dr. Cho run some tests when I get back.  _Lots_  of tests. I'll make sure nothing weird is going on in there."

It didn't make him feel a whole lot better.

Explosions sounded again, much closer this time. They had to be nearing the surface. Peter kept his eyes on the stairs and kept climbing. Higher and higher, closer and closer to the exit, until—

Something clanged in the stairwell above them, and they all froze.

Shuri and Tony were immediately looking to Peter, asking him silently if he could hear who was above them, but his hearing was still stunted. He shook his head helplessly.

Shuri held up her gauntlets silently and motioned for Peter and Tony to step behind her.

_No,_ Peter mouthed, trying to get in front of her instead. He tapped at his chest, telling her without words that he was stronger, sturdier than she was. He could take more punishment.

Shuri swatted him furiously and hissed, "You can't use the contagion right now! Get behind me!"

He started to protest, but more clanging was coming from above. It was quieter now, like the people on the stairs above them had noticed them and were trying to sneak up. He stepped behind Shuri obediently.

Tony and Peter flattened themselves against the wall as Shuri crouched low, keeping her gauntlets aimed up the staircase. She took slow, careful steps up the stairs, inching forward and keeping against the wall. Above them, the clanging had drawn to a halt.

There were a few tense, awful moments then, where they crouched there in complete silence and waited to see who was attempting to ambush them. Peter held his breath and listened for anything but static, but there was nothing. He was practically deaf.

Then, chaos.

Shuri must have seen the HYDRA agents, because she fired rapidly up the staircase. There were a few bursts of light, the outlines of four figures on the staircase above them, and the clang of the blasts ringing off of metal. A few shots were fired back, the bullets whizzing by Peter's head, and he yelped.

Shuri returned fire and yelled for Tony and Peter to get back. There was yelling on the other side, too, obscured by the gunfire, and flickers of desperate movement. There was a flash of vaguely familiar scarlet.

Something caught in the back of Peter's mind, and his eyes went wide. "Shuri, wait—!"

The scarlet swelled and pulsed outward, slamming the three of them to the ground in a jumble of limbs. Peter gasped as his head cracked into the stairs, a dull humming sound filling his ears as he stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Beside him, Shuri and Tony were in similar shape.

Then, a voice.

"We have to keep moving, Steve. If there are already agents searching the stairwell, we can't stay here."

Footsteps, coming closer and closer as Peter rolled onto his side and tried to get his arms beneath him. Another voice said, "We'll take the next door and keep looking for Tony and the kids. If we can't find them in the next few minutes, then—"

Everything went quiet.

Then, "Oh my god—guys—!"

Hands landed on Peter's shoulders, pulling him up and leaning him against the wall. When he blinked hard, getting rid of the dark spots, he found himself staring at Natasha. Behind her, Steve was propping Tony up as Bucky shook Shuri back to life.

"I'm sorry!" Wanda gasped, stepping out from behind the others. "We thought you were HYDRA agents, I never would have hit you if I'd known!"

Tony groaned, rubbing at his head. "Damn…those powers pack a punch."

"I'm sorry!" she repeated. "Are—are you okay?"

"Peachy," Tony said bluntly. He got to his feet, staggering a little, and straightened himself out. "Hang on—you actually found us!"

Steve smiled, though he looked a bit stressed for obvious reasons. "You should have more faith in us. You know…even though we nearly shot you to death in a stairwell."

Peter snickered, then shut himself up as Steve's gaze landed on him. "Sorry," he said awkwardly. "Um, can we get out of here before we're found?"

"About that," Natasha said, helping him stand without the aid of the wall. "We were kind of already found out by HYDRA, and they're looking for us all over the base. They haven't searched the stairwell yet, so we're safe for now."

"Then we'd better get moving before they do," Tony said. "Let's climb."

Tony and Steve pulled ahead, chattering about their plan once they reached the surface, and Peter trailed back to walk with Shuri. Her gauntlets were sparking a little from Wanda's attack, not at their full functionality, and Peter was worried.

"Are you going to be able to fight with those?" he asked.

Shuri gave a sharp nod. "I'll make it work. Believe me, Peter, I've made it out of worse situations with less to work with. Perhaps once we've escaped, I'll tell you that story I mentioned earlier—the one about the time Killmonger attempted to seize control of the Wakandan throne. That would keep you riveted for quite a while."

He blinked, surprised. It was an open invitation to a piece of Shuri's past that she'd been hesitant about sharing not two days prior, one that Peter was intent upon taking. "Yeah," he said quickly. "I'd really like that."

Shuri wagged a finger at him and insisted, "That isn't a one way offer! I expect to hear an equally exciting story from you once I'm done."

Something panged in Peter's chest, a mixture of sorrow and longing, and he knew immediately which story he would have to tell. The one that started with a spider bite, and ended with him holding his hands over Ben's chest as he bled out on the sidewalk.

But that was a story for another time. For now, they all had to focus on getting out of the base in one piece.

"I think the way out is through here," Steve said, stopping the group once they came to a door. "This base is held underground by a series of braces, and we managed to pop one loose and get in through the inner machinery. We can get out the same way."

Natasha crossed her arms and pressed her ear to the door. "Assuming, of course, that HYDRA isn't keeping the brace guarded very closely." She turned to Peter and asked, "Can you hear if anyone is behind this door."

He shook his head. "I'm really sorry, but my hearing is wrecked. There was this headset that kind of disrupted everything, and…yeah."

Natasha nodded in understanding. "Then we'll do it the hard way. Tony, take the kids and stand back. You don't have your suits, or any of your usual equipment—we'll have to handle this."

"Our suits are coming," Tony said. "Though to be fair, they've been on their way for hours. I'm not sure what's taking them so long."

Wanda raised a brow. "Well, New York to Nebraska is quite the flight."

_"Nebraska?_  Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Steve shot them all a look. "Guys, come on—we have to focus! Get to the surface, wait for the others to arrive, then take the base out. And Tony, where's the gauntlet? You didn't connect the weapon, did you?"

He cringed. "Yeah, um, about that…"

Steve pressed a hand over his face in exasperation. "Oh my god."

"Hey, you would have done the same thing! The kids' lives were in danger!"

"I…" Steve trailed off, expression shifting from exasperated to regretful. "I understand. Believe me."

There was a beat, an awkward pause, and Peter shuffled.

Steve shook himself. "What's done is done. Let's get to the surface and figure out what we're going to do about the weapon. I don't suppose any of you three know what it is?"

"They called it a suit," Shuri said. "Though we don't know what kind of suit it is, we do know that it's powered by a battery charged by the gauntlet. The gauntlet itself was taken away. We don't know where."

"Then we'll deal with it." Steve reached for the doorknob and looked to the others, warning them that he was about to engage. Then, when no one protested, he flung the door open and brandished his shield.

There was no gunfire, until there was.

Steve had guessed that agents might be guarding the broken brace, and it looked like he'd been right. Peter couldn't see much—he was being hidden away behind Tony as the rest of the Avengers sans Shuri handled the guards—but it sounded like there were a lot of them. It took minutes for the gunfire to stop.

Steve poked his head around the corner and announced, "The coast is clear. We're going to get out."

Peter stepped hesitantly out of the stairwell and found himself looking at a sea of unconscious agents. Dozens of them, all clustered around a tiny door. He shuddered at the sight of all that blood. He'd seen enough blood for a lifetime already without adding this, and everything he knew he'd see in the future.

Tony's hand landed on his back. "It's okay," he soothed, as if he knew exactly what Peter was thinking. "We're getting out, so just follow Cap and keep your head down. We'll be safe."

Peter gave a nod, though he didn't quite believe him. Shuri drew up at his other side, a stern, comforting presence, and he felt a little better.

Steve led the way into a tiny room, and Wanda got to work at removing a portion of the wall and revealing a hollow tube extending out into the earth. There was sand leaking in, pooling on the ground, and it crunched beneath Peter's feet as he approached what had to be the brace Steve had spoken of.

"Clever," Shuri mused, watching Wanda work. "They extend into what have to be metal supports in the sand. But why are they here? For added structural support?"

"Close," Bucky said. "The whole base is underground, and they want it to stay that way."

Shuri's eyes went wide. "How interesting! The braces are meant to stop the base from being extracted, except for on their terms."

"That's about it, yeah." Bucky moved forward when Wanda motioned, helping to yank the brace fully away from the door. Sand started to pour in, but Wanda immediately pushed it back with her powers and began to create a bubble outside the base.

"This is it," she said. "I'll tunnel us up, and then we'll be free."

Tony raised a brow. "It'll be that easy, huh?"

"With any luck? Yes."

Steve turned, motioning for Shuri and Peter to come forward. "You kids first," he said. "Wanda, help them—"

The whole base shuddered violently, nearly throwing them all off their feet.

Tony grabbed the wall, staggering. "Okay, that wasn't normal."

The base shuddered again, once, twice, three times, and kept going. Everything rumbled.

"Steve?" Bucky grabbed at the brace frantically, fear in his eyes. "What—?"

It happened again. It kept happening.

Then there was the largest jolt yet, and the sand outside shifted down.

"The sand is moving," Peter said dumbly, watching it begin to fall away.

Something sparked in Tony's eyes. "No," he said. "The  _base_  is moving  _up_."

Even as he said it, Peter realized it was the truth. The sand was beginning to rush by as the base rose, and his ears felt slightly tight with the increasing change in altitude. How tall  _was_ this thing?

"Why would they raise the base?" Wanda asked, eyes narrowed. She was still maintaining the bubble around the brace to keep the sand from washing in. "If they're trying to keep us contained and capture us, giving us a way to get outside is the last thing they should be doing."

Peter's stomach sank, and he voiced what they were all thinking. "Unless they  _want_  us outside, so they can use that weapon on us."

Everyone went quiet.

"Well," Tony said, "we don't exactly have a choice. We can't stay here."

"So what," Bucky challenged, "we just run out into the desert and risk playing into their hands?"

"Yeah, actually." Tony was messing with his arc reactor, and Peter couldn't imagine why. It was busted, wasn't it? What was the point? "The suits will be here soon, and then we can face whatever the hell they want to throw at us."

"That," Natasha said, "is a terrible plan. Let's do it."

"That's what I like to hear!"

The base seemed to be about done climbing. It gave one last jolt, then settled into place. It was now or never.

Wanda released the bubble, kicked away what remained of the brace, and stuck her head out the gap in the wall. "We're very high up," she said."

Peter chanced a look out the hole in the wall, and gulped. They were very,  _very_  high up.

Steve peered out and sighed wearily. "It makes sense. We entered the base on one of the highest levels, closest to the surface, so now we're almost at the top of the structure. We need a way down."

Wanda nodded. "I've got us covered." She reached, powers sparking, and a moment later a massive wave of sand was rising up to meet them. It crested at the gap in the wall, and she nodded for the team to step outside. "Slide down," she instructed. "I'll make sure you don't fall."

Steve didn't hesitate. He climbed out the gap, planted his feet in the sand, and began to slide down the massive wave. Bucky was next.

"You first, kids," Tony said. "I'll be right behind you."

Peter gulped a second time and forced a nod. Shuri was already slinging one leg out the hole in the wall, but Peter was a little more hesitant. That…was  _so_  high in the air. But Wanda said she had him, and everyone else seemed okay, and—oh god, what was he thinking? It was either slide down or stay in a base and wait to be killed. It was an obvious choice.

Shuri finished climbing out and turned, offering her hand to Peter. She could tell he was nervous, he thought. "Are you coming?" she asked.

He nodded again and took her hand, holding his breath as he forced himself to climb out after her. He pointedly refused to look down until he accidentally turned his head.

Peter giggled, a little hysterically. "It's—oh my god, Shuri, it's a waterslide without the water."

She looked back at him, concerned. "Are you—?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine! It's just—it's a slide, okay, let me think of it like a waterslide and I'll be fine!" He took a shaky step forward on the sand, which was shifting and churning endlessly beneath his feet, and made to slide down. He lowered himself down so he'd feel safer.

Shuri kept a tight hold of his hand, following suit. She didn't seem afraid, but she was a good friend. She was sticking by him. "It's a sandslide, then," she said. "Sounds close enough to me."

He let his breath out in a massive whoosh, squeezed Shuri's fingers, and started the slide.

It was a chaotic jumble of sand and limbs, a tumble that left Peter breathless with a mixture of terror and exhilaration. He'd never been the best with heights, despite his frequent swinging through New York, so seeing the ground rush up to meet him was dizzying.

It wasn't until he hit the ground that he realized he'd been yelling. Shuri came up beside him, trying not to laugh, but Tony wasn't so polite.

He landed, Wanda hitting the ground a moment later and letting the slide dissipate, and he was choking on laughter. "Oh my god, Pete—!"

"Shut up!" he shrieked, too embarrassed to worry about the fact that he was being so rude to his mentor. "It was scary, okay, it was like a million feet in the air!"

Tony wheezed a little. "Sorry, sorry! I know it's serious, this is a very serious situation that should be taken with the upmost of severity."

He kept going, but Peter wasn't listening anymore. The others were gathering not far away, speaking in hushed tones and staring at something behind him. When Peter turned, his breath was immediately stolen by the massive scale of the HYDRA base.

It was the largest base he'd ever seen. Too many stories to count, high above the ground,  _terrifying._  He swallowed hard.

They regrouped quickly.

"We have to get out of here," Steve said. "We have no idea where HYDRA's new weapon is, and they could turn it on us at any moment."

Peter was okay with that. So was everyone else, it seemed, because they began to move away from the base.

But of course, fate wasn't so kind as to let them escape.

The front of the base opened, dozens of doors giving way to the desert, and then HYDRA agents were streaming out. Somewhere nearby, plane engines were beginning to roar.

Peter's blood ran cold. The last time HYDRA had called in air support, Tony had nearly been killed. There was no way he was letting those vile men hurt  _any_  of his teammates like that again.

Tony seemed to be thinking the same thing. "Our suits have to be close."

"Not close enough." Steve readied his shield. "We're outnumbered here, and we have no idea where that weapon is. What are we going to do?"

"The only thing we can." Tony looked up, as if hoping that the suits would appear, but there was no such luck. "We fight."

That was going to be easier said than done. But there was no other choice, so Peter prepared himself for a fight.

Something roared overhead. "Air support!" Steve yelled, and everyone sprang into action.

The ground troops were beginning to advance, firing on them, and Peter had to think fast and duck behind a dune to keep himself from being perforated. Gunfire peppered the desert.

Above them, a plane flew into sight. Wanda reached up, grabbed, and began to pull it to the ground as it tried to fire on them. Bright flashes of light seared past them, blowing sand into the air, but Wanda was keeping the guns from training on them.

"Kid!" Tony yelled, finding him in the chaos and keeping him behind the dune. "Stay put, okay? Just wait it out; they'll take care of it!"

Sand boomed into the air a few feet away, and the two of them jumped. When Peter looked over, he saw Shuri firing on the HYDRA agents and beginning to advance from dune to dune. His heart leapt, and he got to his feet.

"Kid—!"

He looked back and yelled over the din, "Mr. Stark, I can't just sit here! I have powers, I need to use them!"

"But you're still weak, and—!"

"Remember that thing I told you back when we first met? The thing about feeling responsible if I had power and didn't use it?"

Tony went quiet.

"Well, I think that applies right about now!" He moved to the edge of the dune and paused, peering out to make sure he had enough cover to dash to the next one. "I can help," he called. "I'm strong enough to help!"

Tony just shook his head and protested, "You're a close-range fighter in a long range fight! Those assholes will gun you down before you get within a mile of them!"

Something whistled overhead. For a moment Pete thought it was another plane, but then his hearing sharpened and he realized that he  _recognized_  that sound.

It was one of Tony's rockets.

Peter laughed, because he knew exactly what those rockets were carrying. "I'm going, Mr. Stark—see you soon!"

"Kid, wait—!"

But Peter was already running, chasing something Tony couldn't hear and hadn't seen, and jumping up just as the rockets released their cargo. The module dropped, Peter caught it, and a moment later there was nanotechnology crawling on his skin.

_Yes!_ He whipped around and fired his webshooters at the HYDRA agents, gluing a few together and pulling a few of their weapons to the side. He wondered belatedly where Tony's suit was, before realizing that the Iron Man suit was far heavier even in nanotech and would take slightly more time to transport.

And…hang on, how was Tony supposed to use a suit without the arc reactor working? That was the power source for the nanotechnology, and without it…what could he do? It wasn't like there were any suits with arc reactors preinstalled.

He was shaken from that train of thought as the agents started firing at him, and he sprinted to one side to avoid being struck. The sand was hard to run in, and there wasn't much to sling onto, but he managed to scramble to Shuri's side behind the nearest dune. Not far away, Steve and Wanda were bringing down another plane. Natasha and Bucky were pinned behind another dune, firing occasionally on the enemy but mostly remaining cloaked in the sand.

"We're pinned!" Shuri exclaimed, continuing to fire at the enemy. "Retreating isn't an option, so we have to stay here and draw their fire until the rest of the Avengers arrive!"

Peter nodded, taking his turn to fire a few webs at the troops. There wasn't much he could do in a place without anything to sling onto. His whole battle strategy was about mobility, and when he didn't have that mobility to rely on…

Shuri yelped as a bullet whisked through the sand, spraying grains up in the air and into her eyes.

"Shuri—!"

She rubbed at her eyes, expression one of abject loathing. "We're getting nowhere. Where are the other Avengers? Where is Tony's prototype suit? I told him it was a bad idea, but if none of us can get close…" She trailed off suddenly, like she'd said something she wasn't supposed to.

Peter blinked. "Prototype suit? What are you talking about?"

"Just—" She winced. "Just a new suit Tony was testing out. It has an arc reactor built in, but it's experimental."

So  _that_ was how he was going to power a suit with his reactor broken. "I thought there weren't any suits with reactors built in."

"There weren't. It's new."

Peter accepted it, suspicious though he was, and looked back to the battle. Steve and Wanda had finished up with the air support and were turning their attention on the ground troops. But…something seemed off.

"Why aren't they advancing?" Peter murmured. "They have the advantage right now, in numbers and in positioning, so why aren't they advancing?"

Shuri shrugged. "Perhaps they aren't interested in pursuit, but in defense."

"Yeah, but since when has HYDRA been willing to just let their targets get away? Plus the fact that you, me, and Tony were their prisoners! They shouldn't be letting their prisoners go like this without going after us! What's their angle?"

"I…" Shuri paused, really considering the statement, and frowned. "You're right. What are they playing at?"

More gunfire rang out, and Peter shot the rest of their teammates a troubled look. "Nothing good."

Steve charged a group of agents, shield raised. Wanda tore into the throng.

_Something's wrong._

And he was right. Because not a minute later, Peter sensed it.

The air crackled with ozone. Above them, crisp and freezing in the early morning air, clouds were beginning to roll in. It was almost like a storm was gathering, but not quite—because the real storm was approaching behind them, boxing them in and trapping them against their own cover.

Peter's senses went off a split second before it happened. One moment he was standing there in confusion, and the next he was moving without thinking, grabbing Shuri and diving hard into the earth.

The explosion was so massive that it created a building-sized crater in the sand, grains raining down on Peter's head as he covered Shuri. The blast hadn't hit him, but it had been ear-piercingly loud and  _bright_. It took him a moment to recover and realize that they were in mortal danger.

"The kids!" someone yelled, though Peter wasn't sure who. He was dragging Shuri to her feet and  _running_ , not daring to look in the direction the explosion had come from.

Except it was inevitable, the fact that he would see the weapon HYDRA had built with Tony's work. He looked back despite himself, and he saw it.

A massive suit of armor. Larger than the Iron Man suit, larger than the Hulk Buster. Tall and broad and terrifyingly awesome. It raised its cannon, the weapon that the battery was powering, and aimed it right in between Peter's eyes.

The canon fired, and it all went to hell.


	13. Canon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

Peter yanked Shuri out of the way, just barely avoiding focus point of the blast. It still flung them, though, and the two of them rolled hard and came up panting. The suit was already aiming at them again, but by then the other Avengers had realized what was happening and had turned to help. Wanda swept upwards, drawing the suit's fire, and refused to let those canons dip back towards Peter and Shuri.

"I guess that's the weapon!" Shuri exclaimed, lurching to her feet and raising her gauntlets. She looked fierce, even though she was littered with fresh scrapes and bruises, and Peter couldn't help but feel the deepest sense of respect for her. "Time to take it down."

Peter had this sick feeling that it wouldn't be quite that easy. Anything that was powered by the gauntlet couldn't be good.

Peter's eyes widened as he saw Tony suddenly fall into the line of fire. The suit wasn't aimed at him but it would be soon, and Peter had to think fast. Or maybe he didn't have to think at all, because the way he flung himself out from behind cover to draw the suit's attention was entirely mindless. He fired webs at the thing's legs, but they snapped effortlessly as it continued to advance. Panic beginning to set in, he raised an arm and slung a web onto the suit's shoulder. He pulled himself into the air, ducking the suit's arm when it tried to swing at him, and used both feet to smash into the thing as hard as he could.

It staggered and didn't break.

Peter hit the ground, stunned. With his strength, how was that thing still on its feet? Surely it wasn't made out of—

The suit whirred, turned, and aimed its canon at Peter's head. He had a split second to sling a web onto the suit's side and yank himself out of danger before the explosion hit.

"Kid!" Tony yelled.

"I'm fine!" He hit the ground, skittering a little in the sand. "But—Mr. Stark, I think it's vibranium!"

Even from across the sand field, Peter could see Tony go pale. "What? How is that possible?" he demanded. "Wakanda won't even give  _us_  all the vibranium we want, so how did HYDRA get it?"

"Thievery," Natasha guessed.

"That is a  _lot_  of vibranium to snatch out from under T'challa's nose."

There would have been more, but the suit fired again and nearly blew Natasha to smithereens. The only thing that saved her was Steve, tackling her out of the way. He didn't even try to use his shield—even if it stopped the beam from reaching them, it would still explode once it hit the vibranium and launch them both.

On their other side, the HYDRA agents were beginning to fire at them again—and now they were beginning to advance. The Avengers were quickly becoming sandwiched in.

Peter tried again to take down the suit, sliding under its canon and crushing a fist into its leg, and the metal dented a little but didn't give. He blinked and realized, "Wait—I dented it, it's not pure vibranium! It's an alloy!"

"Then we can get through it," Wanda said determinedly. She reached out and tried to grab onto the suit with her powers, but it fired at her and she had to drop it to get out of the way in time.

The gunfire was still going on behind them, and it was getting closer. Peter shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. "Hey, we should really deal with those agents!"

Bucky was already firing at them, but it wouldn't be enough. They were pinned and outnumbered, up against a superweapon that had seemingly been reinforced with a  _ton_  of vibranium, and Tony  _still_  didn't even have a suit.

"Okay," Steve said, "time for a plan. How do we take this thing down?"

"Go for the legs?" Peter suggested. "The suit is really tall, it might be a little top heavy!"

Wanda agreed, "Push it over. We can do that."

"But we have to have a few people watching our backs." Steve looked between them, then decided, "Shuri, Bucky, Natasha—you three focus on picking off any HYDRA agents that are getting too close. The rest of us will work on the suit."

Peter's stomach flipped at the prospect of fighting that thing. "What about Mr. Stark?"

Steve shot a glance back at Tony and ordered, "Stay under cover until your suit arrives."

Tony shot him a ridiculous-looking thumbs up. "Will do, Cap."

The suit was already beginning to fire on them again, and Peter sprang into action. Wanda was already grabbing at one of the suit's legs with her powers, trying to bring it down, but the thing seemed very good at shooting at her just often enough to keep her from being able to actually pull it over. Meanwhile, Steve was ducking and weaving through its attacks to get close to its legs. He bashed at them with his shield once he got close, but it didn't have much of an impact. The thing kicked him, sent him flying, and went back to shooting at Wanda.

_Okay, okay, focus! You have your suit back, so you have a little protection. You can afford to get in close and try to web him up._ Peter slung himself off the ground with a web attached to the suit's shoulder and kept airborne, aiming to swing around its legs and trip the thing up.

Except, the suit was obviously being piloted by someone, and that someone was smarter than that. A hand grabbed at his web, detaching it from the suit's shoulder, and Peter was suddenly being flung through the air to collide with the cool sand. He gasped, the breath knocked right out of him, and a moment later there was a flash of scarlet and heat and then a massive explosion right where he'd been lying a moment prior. Wanda had saved him.

Peter staggered back to his feet just as Wanda went back in, trying to tear the suit off balance to no avail. Steve had picked himself back up and was doing his best to bash its knees in, but it still wasn't looking very effective.

Behind them, the others were doing their best to keep HYDRA at bay. Bucky and Natasha were picking agents off as they approached, and Shuri had positioned herself behind a dune and was firing relentlessly with her gauntlets. He felt a spark of concern for them, seeing how the agents were advancing bit by bit, but he didn't have the time to focus on them for long.

_Okay, new strategy._ Peter let Wanda and Steve keep working to distract the suit as he darted behind it, keeping out of its vision and slinging up onto its back. He delivered a few solid punches to the metal, hoping to unbalance it from the top, but the thing just took a few steps and regained its balance without a hitch.

"Peter—!"

He leapt off the suit's back before the massive hand could grab him and throw him again. He came down on its metallic forearm and made a grab for its wrist, only to be brushed off like a fly. The suit made to step on him—or rather, the  _man_  in the suit made to step on him—but Peter rolled away before he could have his head crushed in.

Wanda and Steve drew its attention as Peter retreated. This thing was so  _strong;_ how were they going to take it down? With Venom's strength, he'd almost dared to think that he'd never lose a contest of strength again—especially now that he was learning to really control it. But now here this thing was, and it was almost  _freeing_ to know that there were still things he wasn't strong enough to just mow down with brute force. Terrifying, but freeing.

Maybe that was a weird thought, in the middle of a battle where his life and the lives of his friends were at stake. But it made him feel a little more human than he really was.

Heart pounding, Peter straightened and considered the situation. There had to be  _something_  that would make the fight easier.

_Oh—of course!_

Peter slung onto the suit's shoulder again, but this time he just launched off of it to land beside Steve and Wanda. "Guys!"

"Not the time to have a conversation, here, Peter!" Steve threw his shield like a boomerang, but the suit caught it and threw it back. He had to dive out of the way to avoid being killed.

"No, no, listen to me! It's made out of vibranium alloy, so nothing we have will to be able to pierce it—but maybe we can find a way to use its own strength against it!"

Wanda threw up a wall of sand to catch the next blast, the explosion rippling out around them. "Talk faster!" she yelled over the noise.

"Okay, okay—maybe we can't take it down entirely this way, but I think we can damage it if we get it to fire a beam and then make it blow up in its face! Like that one movie with the killer robot that stabs itself over and over to get to the hero, who hid in its belly!"

"It's not going to shoot at  _itself_ ," Steve said. "There's definitely a guy in there, and he's no idiot. So how do we do it?"

Peter yelped in alarm as the suit began to advance. "Make it fire the beam, and then we find a way to make it explode in his face! Like, Wanda—you tossed up that sand, right, and it made it explode, so just throw sand in his face right before he fires! Or Captain Rogers, you can throw your shield!"

"Easier said than done," Wanda said, though she looked thoughtful. "To get it to explode in the proper range, I'll have to be lightning quick."

"Then be that quick, and we'll at least damage the suit enough to get the upper hand!"

Wanda paused, looking to Steve. He nodded once and said, "Better than nothing. Peter, try to keep him distracted while we set up."

"Will do!" He turned and slung himself into the air, still using the suit as a brace to move himself around the battlefield. He really wished there were some buildings around, or trees, or  _something_  else he could grab onto. There was always the base, but the suit was just too far away from it.

Something roared overhead. For a moment Peter thought it was more air support, until he looked up and saw a pod streaking across the sky. It crashed in the sand a ways away from the base, just out of sight.

Tony moved suddenly and yelled, "That's the suit! Keep him busy, I'll be back in a minute!" Then he slid over the top of the nearest dune, half running down to the pod, and Peter couldn't see him any longer.

"Peter, draw his fire!" Steve yelled, and he knew that they were about to put the plan in action.

Peter moved. Slinging onto the suit wasn't working, so he stayed on the ground as he approached and tried to get the suit to focus on him. "Hey!" he yelled, sliding between its legs and luring it away from the rest of the team. "Over here! Come on, eyes on me!"

The canon fired, and Steve's shield whisked by a moment too early. Peter barely avoided being blasted.

Wanda reached out a hand and returned Steve's shield in a halo of scarlet. "Close," she said. "Try it again!"

Peter got back to work. His hearing was ever-sharpening after the headset's fading effect, and he was beginning to get a grasp on what was happening in the other parts of the battlefield. He could hear Tony swearing under his breath, trying to get his suit to work. He could hear Bucky firing into a thinning crowd of agents, Natasha at his side. He could hear Shuri, yelling and taking down everyone in her path, even with her damaged equipment. But for every man the three of them took down, three more appeared from the mouth of the base. It was a Sisyphean task.

The suit fired again, and this time Wanda tried to pull up a wave of sand in its face to make the beam explode. But once again she was too early, and the beam landed a few feet away from Peters' position. He cried out as the shock wave hurled him to the ground, knocking him toward the suit. For a moment his world turned into a mesh of buzzing pain and disorientation, until suddenly there was a massive hand curling around his chest and  _squeezing._

He felt a rib pop, but the adrenaline kept the pain at bay. He scrabbled at the metallic fingers, struggling to pry them off before they constricted and cut off his breathing entirely.

Steve's shield crashed into the suit's arm, Peter got a foot hooked under its elbow, and he just barely managed to get himself free before his vision started spotting. The canon was raised, fired, and Wanda's wave of power came just a heartbeat too late to detonate it in the suit's face.

Peter was thrown back a second time, but this time he landed on his feet. His chest was burning and aching, and he raised a hand only to feel that it was wet, too, and for one terrifying moment he thought he'd been torn open.

But no—when he looked down, the liquid on his chest was coming away clear instead of red.

_The contagion!_ He dabbed at it, stunned, before realizing that he could  _use_  this. He wasn't the best at controlling it yet, but the contagion was way tougher than he was. He could use it like a shield and get in close!

He tried to remember everything Shuri had told him about controlling his powers, and everything he'd realized in the past few weeks. Summoning the fear necessary to make the contagion emerge wasn't a challenge in his present situation, with Steve and Wanda struggling to stay on their feet and the others slowly being edged back and cornered against the dunes.

_Come on,_ he thought, clenching his fists.  _Figure it out, Parker. Think about what you want to do, and do it! You tell the contagion what to do, not the other way around._

He took a deep breath, concentrated, and the gel began to spread. Just over one arm, because that was all he could handle, and it was obscured by the suit so no one would notice what he was doing.

Peter looked up to see Steve and Wanda still trying and failing to damage the suit with its own explosion. He took one step, then two, and then he was running toward the thing because with the contagion covering his arm, he thought he stood a chance of actually getting the suit to stand in one place.

He ran at the suit with everything he had. Wanda and Steve were suddenly yelling, telling him to stop, telling him that getting that close was a bad idea. The head of the suit swung to face him, the canon raised in his direction, and Peter grabbed onto the barrel.

There was a strange moment of stillness, where the man in the suit stared at him from behind the mask in bewilderment and Peter gripped the barrel of the canon and refused to let it shift. A standoff, almost, as the suit tried to rip its arm away and Peter absolutely wouldn't let it happen. The contagion brought out the best of his strength, gave him a catalyst through which to use it, and he was using it now as he held onto that canon and aimed it far, far away from anyone on the battlefield.

Steve and Wanda were silent, stunned, until Peter turned his head and yelled, "Do it now!"

Wanda raised a hand, but that was when the man inside the suit seemed to regain his wits, and the suit's other hand reached over and grabbed Peter around the waist. He threw him, wrenching his canon free and swinging it down to aim point blank at his head. Peter had about a split second to stare in abject horror, his life flashing before his eyes as the bright white light of the canon began to flare in the barrel, before there was a flash of scarlet and a blur of red, blue, and silvery white, and then an explosion that tried very hard to take his head off.

He would have died there. But Wanda used her powers to hold the shield in place as the suit fired, her timing finally perfect as the beam shot out of the canon, hit the shield, and exploded in it the suit's face.

Peter's ears rang. For just a moment his limbs didn't want to move. But them he was being picked up by Steve, an expression of alarm on his face as he gave him a once over to make sure he wasn't hurt.

Peter blinked. Then, "Did it work?"

Steve nodded to the suit. "See for yourself."

Everything was still a little off-kilter, but Peter still managed to lock his eyes on the place where the suit had gone down.

The suit was smoking, flat on the ground and clearly out of commission. The explosion had knocked it down, and it was staying there.

"Peter," Steve said, "you're a genius."

"Or he's just seen a lot of movies," Wanda said with a smile. "Now, let's make sure the suit is down for good. HYDRA's greatest weapon  _cannot_  be allowed to turn back on."

A low, crackly laugh sounded in the direction of the suit.

Everyone froze.

The suit's chest, a mangled mess of metal, was shifting. From inside, Peter caught the glint of unfamiliar eyes as a man extracted himself from the suit. He was injured—bleeding from the nose and mouth, scrapes along his arms, a few solid gashes in his chest. It didn't look like he was going to live.

Steve stepped forward and raised his shield. "Whoever you are, put your hands up and don't make any sudden moves!"

The man laughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood, and collapsed. Blood pooled around him as he leaned on the suit's canon. "Useless," he snarled. "No matter how many times I tell them to make sure  _all_  the cracks are covered…"

The hair on the back of Peter's neck prickled. He turned, looking for the threat, but all he saw was the rest of the team standing their ground against the throng of HYDRA agents. Tony was still nowhere to be found.

"We've defeated you," Wanda said, taking slow, measured steps forward. "Call off your men and we'll spare you your life."

Steve made a face, but didn't correct her. Peter watched nervously.

The man just laughed. "You really think that  _this_ was our greatest weapon? The reason we had Stark give us the power of the gauntlet?  _No_." He coughed, blood spattering the sand. "This was a diversion. The real weapon is on its way."

Steve stiffened. "Hey—"

But the man's hand was already at his earpiece, and he barked, "This is Director Leland. Turn the weapon on the Avengers, and do it  _now!"_

Steve stepped forward quickly, hand reaching out with the intent of grabbing Leland and stopping him from saying anything else. But before he could, disaster struck.

Peter realized what was about to happen a moment before it did, but he was too slow to stop it.

Leland yanked on the canon, aiming it into Steve's chest, and wrenched his hand inside the suit to pull the trigger.

There was a flash of light, a roaring explosion, and then Steve was collapsed on the ground and Leland was dead.

There was a moment of stillness, of horror, before Peter and Wanda scrambled to Steve's side. Peter dropped to his knees in cold horror, hands landing on Steve's bloodied chest. He was alive—he could hear his heartbeat—but it certainly wasn't good. That explosion had hit him at point blank range, and there were burn marks all up and down his skin and chunks taken out of his torso.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Because behind them, the HYDRA base was beginning to shift again.

It happened in a matter of moments. The highest level of the base morphed, rippled, contorted, and then the muzzle of a massive canon appeared. Like the suit's canon, but ten times as large and  _radiating_  power.

That was the weapon HYDRA had been talking about. If it was ten times as big then it was at least ten times as powerful, and that kind of power could level a city.

Now it was trained on the Avengers.

Peter reached down and removed Steve's earpiece, pressing it into his own ear and turning it on. "Guys, Captain Rogers is down!"

"What?" Bucky gasped into the coms. "Where is he? How bad is it? I have to get him out of here!"

Wanda snapped, "No—he's badly hurt, but we can't afford to take anyone out of the battle! That weapon at the top of the base could be more powerful than anything we've ever seen!"

"Then we should run," Natasha said. "Regroup, come back with S.H.I.E.L.D. and take that thing down! It's not like it's mobile, we can afford to back down for a few hours and—!"

A loud, whirring sound filled the air, and a moment later the canon was lifting off the building on the back of what looked like a massive airship. Like the helicarrier, but slightly smaller and far flatter.

"It's mobile!" Bucky yelled.

Peter froze, overwhelmed.  _We have to stop that thing from leaving the area. If it takes us down and gets out, it could level entire cities before we find it and defeat it. Thousands, if not_ hundreds _of thousands of people will die._

"What's the plan?" Natasha asked sharply. "Tony, where's that suit?"

There was no response. Tony wasn't on the coms yet, and neither was Shuri.

"Okay," Natasha said, "if Tony's not here, then here's the plan. Someone get Shuri and get her back here to help Steve. She's not technically a medical doctor, but I'm sure she can help. Wanda, see if you can drag that airship down. Barnes, the two of us will keep thinning out the agents here."

"What about me?" Peter asked, eyes glued to the canon on the back of the airship.

"Get Shuri to Steve, and then help where you can. Once that airship comes into range, sling onto it and start taking out the agents piloting it."

He nodded. "Understood."

They went into action.

Wanda started trying to drag the airship down with her powers, as Bucky and Natasha kept picking off agents where they could. As they fought, Peter scrambled for Shuri's position.

"Peter!" she called as he approached. "What's going on? What's that airship doing up there?"

"It's the weapon!" he called back, skittering to her side behind a dune. "The suit was just a diversion, I'm sure the gauntlet and the generator are up there! That giant canon is probably powerful enough to level all of New York city in a single blast!"

"Probably," she echoed. "It could be far less powerful than that, or far more. We won't know until it attacks."

As she spoke, the interior of the canon was beginning to glow. Charging up in preparation for an attack, one that could leave the entire team dead or severely injured.

Peter shivered. "Captain Rogers is down. We thought you might be able to help."

She raised a brow. "Of course I can help. Take me to him."

He did just that.

When Shuri saw Steve laid out on the ground, she went very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that Peter was worried she was about to say that he was done for. But them she nodded and knelt at his side, beginning to remove the tattered fabric around his wounds, and got to work.

"I can help him," she said again, and this time she sounded surer of herself. "Help me get him behind cover."

Peter lifted Steve, barely stooping under the weight, and carried him behind the nearest dune. "We're going to try to bring down the airship," he said. "Once we do, we'll be safe."

Shuri shot him a glance and said, "Let's hope that you manage to bring that thing down before it gets out of the desert."

Peter's earpiece sparked suddenly, and he hissed as Tony's voice began to filter in through the static.

He said, "Sorry, bring what thing down? This suit is new, and the coms are still a little patchy…"

"Mr. Stark!" Peter shot to his feet, looking for the new suit flying through the air, but he saw nothing. "Where are you? Where is the suit? We need it!"

"I'm still getting the final systems online," Tony said, voice tense. "It's a very early prototype, and it didn't handle the journey very well."

"Do you need help?" Peter asked. "I can—"

"No! No, kid—focus on the battle. I'll be in the air before you know it."

Peter wasn't so sure. Something about the way Tony was speaking, about the way Shuri was staring pointedly at Steve and refusing to react, was making him feel suspicious.

But the canon in the sky was powering up. It was powering up more and more, growing closer and closer to firing with every passing moment, and he had to help make sure that didn't happen.

He sprang back into the battle.

Wanda was slowly lowering the aircraft, dragging it to the ground with her powers. Not quite low enough for Peter to sling up onto it, but it was close. Bucky and Natasha were still firing endlessly. Tony was muttering in Peter's ear about how the suit was almost online,  _almost_  there.

More of the contagion was leaking out, covering Peter's other arm in response to his fear. He flexed his fingers, took a deep breath, and fired a web at the aircraft. It missed by a mile.

"The canon is charging up!" Wanda called. "Can anyone tell where it's aiming?"

Peter traced the path of the barrel down to the desert, to the middle of the battlefield. "It's aimed right for the center of the fight!" he called into the earpiece. "And we have no idea how large the blast radius will be!"

"Then we have to aim it somewhere else," Wanda said. She was already trying to turn the ship, to aim the canon into the empty desert, but the canon was just swiveling on its base to stay locked on target.

"We'll have to pull the canon separate from the rest of the ship," Bucky realized. "It'll just turn if you keep doing it the way you're doing it!"

"How do we do that?" Wanda asked, strained. "It's taking all my strength to move it this much!"

"Someone has to pull from the other side," Natasha said. "Wanda, if you brace the ship and Peter pulls the canon, the two of you should be able to pull it off course."

"Me?" Peter asked, taken aback. "But—how am I supposed to do that?"

Wanda hissed, and the airship began to drop even faster as she pulled at it. "I'll lower it, and you sling a web onto the gun. Pull as hard as you can and aim the weapon into the desert!"

"Okay, okay—I can do it!" Peter skittered forward and fired at the weapon, but the web fell just a little short.

The canon was glowing hotter and hotter. Even from the ground, Peter was beginning to feel the heat. The contagion bubbled and spread down over his stomach in response.

Wanda cried out, the airship dropped again, and Peter fired just one more time.

The web hit home.

Peter shot another one with his other arm, wrapping the webbing around his wrists and bracing himself the best he could in the sand. "I've got it! Hold the aircraft still!"

Wanda's eyes sparked, and the aircraft stopped moving.

Peter took a few deep pulls of air, dug his heels into the sand, and began to pull as hard as he could. For a long moment nothing happened, as he strained to move the canon with only sand to grip onto as a counterweight. The webbing was stretching, being drawn to its limit, but he kept pulling. He  _had_  to move the canon before it went off.

_Come on!_ He gasped, the strain beginning to send jolts of pain up his arms. There was more bubbling at his chest, the sensation of the contagion beginning to fan out, and some of the stuff gooped around his fingers and helped seal his grip to the webbing. Then, as Peter watched in shock, the stuff started to  _climb up the webbing_. Like an extension of himself, winding and coiling and increasing the strength of the webbing tenfold. No,  _more_  than tenfold.

The contagion reached the end of the webbing, sticking to the canon. And this time, when Peter pulled, the canon moved.

Peter's heart leapt with hope as he kept pulling, and the canon kept moving. It shrieked on its hinges as it was forced to pivot, the barrel swinging away from the center of the battlefield.

"It's moving!" Peter gasped, hardly daring to believe it. "It's moving, I can aim it into the desert!"

The coms hissed, buzzed, and then a familiar voice was trickling in.

"Hang on, kid, I'll help you out!"

His eyes widened and he called, "Mr. Stark!"

A flash of red and— _purple_ , for some reason, appeared in the sky above him, flying to the canon. Tony landed on top of the airship and grabbed the barrel of the canon. "Pull!" he yelled. "We'll get it aimed away from the battlefield!"

The canon pulsed, dangerously close to firing, and Peter pulled harder. They  _had_  to get the canon aimed away before it went off, otherwise they risked  _all_  of them dying. He yanked harder, then harder still, until his shoulders threatened to pop right out of their sockets. He cursed the looseness of the sand, as it gave beneath his feet and caused him to slide forward with every tug.

Above, Tony seemed to be in the same position. He pushed, the suit flaring with purple, and the canon continued to turn—now slightly faster than before. "Almost there, kid!"

The light pulsed again. It was almost ready to fire.

Peter strained.  _I can move it! I just need three more good tugs, then I'll be able to aim it away!_

Another pulse. They were happening more quickly now.

Peter tugged once, as hard as he could. The weapon shifted.

Something inside the canon clicked and roared.

He tugged again, and the weapon shifted again.

There was a massive clank. The canon jolted, and something in the base almost seemed to unlock.

If Peter had taken even half a second to realize what had just happened, he wouldn't have done what he did next. But he was consumed by his task, by the desire to point the canon in any other direction, so he took hold of the webbing and pulled just one last time, as above him Tony heaved with all his strength.

The canon moved. But that sound in its base really had been a sound of some inner mechanism unlocking to keep Peter from tearing the weapon off the ship entirely, and so when Peter pulled, the canon swung freely around.

Peter staggered back and fell, shocked by the sudden lack of resistance. He was so unbalanced that he ended up on his back, the barrel of the canon swinging all the way around and aiming into the desert. Judging by the yelp and sharp clank above him, Tony was experiencing the same thing.

For just a moment, he was relieved. The weapon was aimed away from them, and firing off into the desert wouldn't hurt anyone. He almost said as much, getting to his feet as the contagion that had crept up his webbing began to retreat back into his skin.

But then he realized  _exactly_  where the canon was aimed, and his blood ran cold.

It had been a mistake. He hadn't meant to swing it that far around. But he had, and now Shuri was kneeling over Steve and working right in the line of fire.

If that canon went off, it would kill them both.

Peter raised a hand to his earpiece without thinking and yelled, "Shuri, get out of there! The weapon is going to fire on you!" But she didn't react, because she had no earpiece and the roar of the aircraft's engines was blocking her hearing.

Peter had exactly one moment to think, where the canon pulsed again and the light in the barrel grew and prepared to fire. Shuri and Steve were out of Wanda's range, and even if they hadn't been, she was too busy holding the aircraft down to reach over and save them with her powers. Natasha and Bucky were too far away. Tony wasn't on the battlefield.

He realized all of this in that one moment. Then the moment was gone, and the canon was only a few seconds from firing, and Peter made a decision without thinking.

He shot a web onto the bottom of the aircraft, flicked his wrist, and threw himself in Shuri's direction.

"Kid!" Tony yelled in horror, but he didn't stop. He shot himself towards Shuri like a bullet, not quite sure what he intended to do what he got there but not willing to think about it until he was  _there_. The canon was making this low, imminent sound that made his stomach churn.

He landed hard in the sand. Shuri was crouching there, working on Steve, but when she heard him hit the ground she turned to him with a frown. "Peter?" she asked. "What—?"

Peter threw himself over her and reached out an arm to sling them out of danger, but it was too late.

The canon fired, there was a terrible flash of heat and agony at his back, and then his world went dark.


	14. The Power Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. MANY. CLIFFHANGERS. 
> 
> Seriously. I'm sorry for the cliffhangers. 
> 
> Anyway though, enjoy the chapter! I'm sorry it's shorter than usual, but this is my first full day moved into my new apartment and I have a TON to do, so this is the best I've got. Still, I'm proud of it!

Tony cursed under his breath, trying to get the suit online as the battle raged on behind him. He'd known that it wouldn't be easy, getting the suit to work when it had never been tested for actual combat before, but this was his only option.

The purple stone glowed at him from its place inside the arc reactor as he scrambled to finish getting everything working. It almost felt like the thing was mocking him, staring him in the face as the rest of his team fought for their lives and telling him that he was  _helpless_ , that he didn't have any way of helping them.

_Come on, it's almost online! Just give me another few minutes…_

The suit pointedly refused to come online. He felt like he was working with one of the first iterations of the Iron Man suit, sitting in his lab and struggling to make the clunky technology work for him. He wasn't using nanotech with this particular prototype, so the entire suit was just lying in the sand as he tried to get it on its feet.

Behind him, someone yelled. The explosions were becoming more and more frequent.

Tony wrenched at the suit, prying the chest compartment open and beginning to tinker with the reactor. Something had been knocked loose in the journey, and it wasn't powering the suit correctly.

More explosions, and more yelling. The coms were online, but no one was speaking beyond the occasional call for help. It sounded like the team was quickly being overrun and overwhelmed. He had to get the suit running  _now._

The arc reactor sparked, but wouldn't turn on. A horrifying sound filled the air, stone and steel grinding and shifting, and when Tony turned around he saw that there was a massive canon peeking out from the top of the HYDRA base. The reactor sparked again.

"I've almost got it!" he called, but no one answered.

Then the canon lifted off the base, and Tony's blood ran cold. That…was an airship. The top of the base was an airship, and it was carrying the canon into the sky.

If that thing got away, there was no telling what would happen.

The arc reactor flickered longer for this time. Inside it, the stone was spitting out sparks. The clunky veins of the suit flared momentarily with purple. In the sky above, the airship was stuttering as Wanda grabbed onto it with her powers. She was trying to drag it down, he thought, but the ship was so massive that she was barely making a dent. A few webs shot into the air in an attempt to grab onto the canon, and Tony's heart skipped a beat as he realized that Peter was out there in the line of fire.

The canon was beginning to charge up.

_No, no, no!_ Tony had let the kid down once before; he was  _not_ going to let it happen again. He was going to get his suit online and help him before something terrible happened. As far as he knew, Peter was still having dizzy spells and still trying to get used to his powers—what if he was hit with one of those spells right as the canon fired? What if he was too slow to get out of the blast radius?

The suit flared with purple again, longer this time, before going dead.

_Almost…_

Another set of webbing went up, and this time they stuck. From the voices filtering through the coms, Tony knew that Peter and Wanda were trying to get the canon to aim off in another direction before it went off and killed them all.

One more time, the suit flared and then died. But then Tony gave the arc reactor one last nudge, one last adjustment, and the entire suit  _pulsed_.

The seams of the suit seared with purple, the color licking up and down the red alloy, and Tony's eyes went wide. There was this unmistakable  _power_ radiating off of the thing, more intense than anything he'd ever felt. He'd installed a series of incredibly complex dampeners to filter the energy, to make it way less deadly and a lot more usable, but now he wasn't so sure they would hold. But even if they wouldn't, he didn't have a choice but to use the suit. There were a lot of lives at stake here.

Tony wrenched the suit up, cringing as tiny shocks of power jumped from the metal to his skin. The chest compartment was already open, and it took him only a moment to get the rest of the suit's front unlatched. He stepped into it, felt the metal seal around him, and—

_Woah._

All of his muscles locked up for a moment as the suit  _gripped_ him, this intense energy searing through him like a flame. He gasped, pained, as power coursed through the suit and tried to jump into his body, to shut everything down, to knock him down and stop his heart. But the dampeners were hard at work, were snapping the power up and storing it in the suit and creating the thinnest of barriers between Tony and the raw, unfiltered power of the mysterious stone. It was like a narrow floodgate keeping an entire ocean at bay.

Tony knew immediately that the dampeners weren't going to be enough to make the suit usable. Already the power was seeping into his bones, trickling past the suit's defenses and leeching into his body. His heart was beating dangerously fast, muscles stuttering as he tried to take a step. He couldn't stop, though. He had to fight, or he risked letting all of his friends die—and then however many innocent people HYDRA decided to kill with that weapon

Overhead, the canon was shifting as Peter and Wanda pulled at it. Tony had to get there and help them, before the weapon went off.

He took another step forward, then another, and then he was lifting off the ground and rising into the air. The thrusters on his suits stuttered for a moment, then flared with purple and shot him straight up into the early morning sky.

Tony yelped in an embarrassingly undignified manner as he flew. The suit was a little choppy, but he could  _feel_  the raw power at his fingertips. But at the same time, he could feel the consequences of that raw power. He could feel a sharp pain starting up behind his eyes and in his chest, pulsing with the beat of his heart as he pushed the suit harder. Every flare of his thrusters, every extra ounce of power used—it all came out of  _him_.

_Probably the dampeners,_ he thought through a twinge of pain.  _They're supposed to be a shield between the stone and me, but they're not strong enough to contain all that raw energy. Every time I have to draw more out of the reactor to power a higher function of the suit, the excess power hits me instead of being reabsorbed._

He wasn't going to last long. He'd have to work fast.

Tony got himself stabilized in the sky, hovering there as he took in the situation. The canon was still shifting atop the airship, pulled by Peter as Wanda held the ship still with her powers. It was moving, but it wasn't fast enough. It was clearly in its final stage of preparation before it fired on them, and that couldn't be allowed to happen.

Tony fired his thrusters and rocked across the sky. "Hang on, kid!" he called. "I'll help you out!"

Peter raised his head and gasped. "Mr. Stark!"

Tony approached the airship from above and landed hard beside the canon. There were a few HYDRA agents in place to guard it, and he made short work of them with the suit's repulsors.

_Oh, god._ He staggered for a moment as the pain in his chest grew sharper. The repulsor beams were a no-go, he quickly decided, unless he really needed them.

Focusing, Tony reached out and grabbed onto the barrel of the gun. He planted his feet, braced himself against the metal, and began to yank at it. "Pull!" he yelled to Peter through the coms, pretending he was okay. "We'll get it aimed away from the battlefield!"

Peter pulled harder, straining, and the canon began to move just a little bit faster. The pain in Tony's chest was sharpening with every moment, but he kept his head down and focused on getting the canon turned.

It shifted sharply, and Tony's heart leapt with hope. "Almost there, kid!"

It kept moving. But then, out of nowhere, there was a sharp sound from inside the canon. Tony frowned, confused, but didn't stop pulling. And then he regretted not stopping, because he pulled, Peter pulled, and the entire canon swung on its axis.

The canon whirled around, unlocking from its position, and crushed into Tony with the force of a battering ram. He gasped, swatted out of the air like a fly. The metal of the aircraft crunched as he hit it, folding around the energy coursing around his suit. The impact was so jarring that it took him a moment to realize what had happened—and even once he did, rising was difficult. The fall seemed to have damaged the dampeners even further, and the power was leeching into him faster than ever

Breathing fast to compensate for the burn in his lungs, Tony staggered to the edge of the aircraft and then dropped to his knees. For a moment he was relieved, because now the canon could fire into the desert without killing anyone. They'd done it, even if he was hurting more than he wanted to admit. They'd made sure everyone was safe.

But that was when it happened.

That was when Tony looked up and saw the barrel of the canon, aimed at two dark spots on the sand. For a moment he thought it was nothing. Maybe two HYDRA agents that had wandered out of line, or a couple of tumbleweeds. But then he saw one of them raise their head, and he nearly choked as he realized that Shuri and Steve were in the direct line of fire.

And Peter was running toward them.

There was this blinding moment of panic, where he realized what was about to happen. Where he saw Peter moving, running as fast as he could to where Shuri was treating Steve. He tried to get up and fly to the three of them, to grab them and pull them out of danger and save their lives. Then he tried to yell after Peter, when his suit refused to move, and his muscles stayed locked up tight. "Kid!" he cried, but Peter didn't respond. "Peter, stop! It'll hit you too!"

But Peter still wasn't speaking, was entirely focused on getting to Shuri and Steve even when it was  _obvious_ that he wouldn't save them in time. Tony's heart stuttered as he saw what was about to happen, saw it in slow motion, but  _still_  couldn't seem to get back on his feet. The impact had been harsher than he'd thought, and operating the suit with damaged dampeners was near impossible.

But  _Peter_.

He wanted to look away, as Peter reached Shuri and held out a hand to her in desperation. All he could see was the terror on Peter's face, the determination to save his friends, and it made Tony's heart break because he could  _feel_ it when the canon rumbled in preparation to fire. He could feel the heat.

The canon went off.

It happened in slow motion, the catastrophe. The beam of light streaked from the canon, tearing right for where Peter was standing over Shuri, the light twisting and curving and arcing around them.

Peter turned, grim realization in his eyes. Looked up, and for just a split second, Tony thought he was looking at  _him._

Then the beam hit, the world washed with color and sound and  _fire_ , and it was over.

The explosion was massive. It rippled out across the desert in a wave of smoke and fire and destruction, sand flying up in all directions, and Tony got a close look at just how devastating HYDRA's new weapon could be.

But Peter—he knew Peter had gotten an even closer look.

"Pete!" Tony called desperately, hoping to hear  _anything_ over the coms in response. "Pete, come on—answer me!"

The center of the explosion made no move to respond. The fires were still raging, the smoke still pluming, and Tony strained his eyes as it began to clear up. But—there was nothing.

Nothing but sand.

"Peter," Tony whispered, and the suit finally listened to his silent pleas. He rose, lurching upright at last, and the thrusters on his suit carried him to the ground. "Peter—!"

"That explosion was big enough to wipe out an entire city block," Natasha said over the coms, horrified.

Tony flew over the site of the explosion, skimming the ash. "Peter! Come on, kid, say something!"

But there was nothing, not in the sand nor over the coms, as Tony scanned the area. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to consider it. But—

"Tony," Natasha whispered. "They might be…"

_"No!_  No, don't say that—Peter, please, answer me!"

Something boomed behind him, but Tony didn't look. He kept flying, kept scanning, heart growing darker by the moment.

"The weapon is beginning to charge again," Wanda said lowly. "If it aims at us, I can't shift it on my own."

It was a call for Tony's help, but he wasn't listening. Because there, in the sand, was just the barest hint of red.

He soared towards that color, a mixture of determined and horrified, just like Peter's expression right before the impact. He reached it, landed hard in the ashy sand, watched it spray into the air as he ran. The grains crunched beneath his boots as he stopped, dropping to one knee and reaching for that slip of red among the sand.

For one, heart-stopping moment, he thought it was blood. But then his fingers landed on it and it didn't crumble, didn't smear, and he realized that it wasn't blood—it was  _fabric_.

It was a piece of Peter's suit.

There was this split second where everything stood still, where Tony held that scrap of cloth and was unable to realize what had happened, what was in his hand. This split second where he stared and felt this awful pressure in his chest, building higher and higher until he realized that the hands of his suit were glowing, and his chest was sparking, and purple was crawling all over him.

_Rage._ Rage followed by loss and disbelief, choking him with the sheer intensity of it all. The pain in his chest and behind his eyes was back, sharp and bitter, but he barely felt it because those assholes had just killed his  _son,_ and now they were going to pay with their lives.

"Tony," Natasha said, like she knew what he was feeling.  _"Don't."_

Last time, when Peter had died in his arms, he hadn't been able to kill the one responsible. But now he knew where they were, knew they were  _up there_ , and he had the power to put an end to them. He had the power to stop it.

His own life meant nothing. He raised a hand, purple swelled around him, and he fired at the canon.

He nearly blacked out. But that didn't matter, because a deadly bolt of purple surged from his fingertips and tore through the air. Power crackled all around him, making Tony's hair stand on end even from inside the suit. It was like a bolt of colored lightning, a lick of pure energy that seared his skin even from dozens of meters away.

The beam tore down the barrel of HYDRA's canon and burst out the other side, where it vanished into the sky.

The world was completely silent. Then, in an explosion that shook the earth, the airship went down in flames.

The airship crashed to the sand, disintegrating into chunks of metal and flakes of ash. Yells of confusion and terror sounded in the coms, the Avengers scattering every which way to avoid being smashed.

"Stark!" Bucky yelled. "What are you doing? Stop, you're going to kill us all!"

He couldn't hear him, though. He couldn't hear anything; he was too busy watching the weapon that had killed not just his son, but  _three members of their team,_ break into pieces and come to rest in the sand.

Natasha gasped as if she'd been hit. "Tony, please—!"

But  _no_ , there was still more to do. There were still more HYDRA agents there, cowering against their base. Some of them were trying to escape back into the structure. Some of them were just staring in horror as their greatest weapon went down and stayed down.

He knew he should stop. He'd learned a long time ago that revenge only felt good for a moment, and then he'd be left with a sense of terrible loss and regret. He knew, even if he didn't want to know, that what he was about to do was wrong. But there was this voice in the back of his head whispering that he had the  _power_ , so why shouldn't he use it? What was stopping him other than himself?

And he wanted them dead. He wanted HYDRA dead, for  _everything_  they'd done. So when the voice whispered, and his mind washed with purple, he didn't fight it.

He raised a hand, ignoring the piercing, horrible agony rising in his chest and creeping out to his limbs, and fired at the HYDRA base.

There was yelling in his earpiece as he did it. As he held both hands out in front of him and fired his repulsors, the purple energy intensifying and tearing into the stone like it was made of paper. The beams hit the base in the middle, and the upper layers immediately began to crumble as their supports were blown out. Any agents inside were crushed as it came tumbling down, as Tony fired again and again, reducing it all to rubble and dust and blood. The energy was seeping into his bones and his blood, grabbing at his lungs, piercing his heart, but he didn't care. The darkness in the back of his mind was almost satisfied.

"Stop,  _stop—_ Stark, you hit Natasha!"

He fired again. Then again, even though the base was destroyed and the canon was smoking and there were no signs of any remaining agents. There was a continuous stream of purple energy streaming from his palms and his chest and every seam of his suit, demolishing everything around him and then some.

The yelling was still droning in his ear, a distraction from his quest. "Tony!" came a vaguely familiar voice. "Tony, I don't know what's going on, but you have to stop! You're going to kill us!"

He didn't care. He fired again.

"Tony please! I know you're upset, but Peter wouldn't want you to kill! None of the three of them would want you to kill!"

_Kill?_

He blinked. No…he wasn't supposed to  _kill_. He was supposed to save! What…what was he  _doing?_

Abruptly, he realized that his heart was beating out of control, and the pain in his entire body was blinding, and he felt like he was about to pass out.  _The suit,_ he realized.  _It—it's killing me._

"Get out of there!" that same voice yelled, pained though it was, and Tony realized that it belonged to Natasha. "Tony, get out of the suit!"

Everything was thrown into horrific clarity, and Tony let himself drop. His entire body was hot and itching and painful, his chest was constricting, his lungs refused to draw breath, and it took everything he had just to land without losing consciousness. He skittered in the loose sand, rolled, and drew to a halt near the center of the explosion that had wiped Peter, Shuri, and Steve off the map.

He knew he had to get the suit off, but all his strength had left him. He was burning alive, lying there in the sand, and it took everything he had just to raise a hand and pop off his faceplate. He fumbled with the suit's greaves, trying to get the metal to release, and when he did he saw that his skin was  _cracked,_ almost, these thin purple veins of light running up his ankles before vanishing past the seared hem of his jeans.

_Not good._

He reached for the release on his chest, but his fingers were going numb. Panicked and growing closer and closer to unconsciousness, he had to think fast. He forced his fingers to press at the center of the arc reactor, popping it out and letting it fall to the ground. The purple stone pulsed from within, staring Tony dead in the face and taunting him with what he'd just done. With what had just  _happened_. The stone was out of the suit but the energy was still lingering, still coursing through him, and he scrabbled to get the rest of his armor off. He kicked off his boots, tore at his chestplate, ripped the gauntlets off his arms until only his gloves were left.

Then it was too much, and he collapsed onto the sand.

He panted, chest heaving, staring up at the ashy sky. His palms were still burning with residual power, but he didn't have the strength to rip the gloves away. His whole body was practically vibrating with residual power, the stuff running through his veins and making his blood  _burn_. There were these blooming dark spots at the edges of his vision, threatening to drag him under, but he fought it. He wanted to stay awake. He…he didn't want to face the hell that would await him in his dreams.

But…the longer he fought it, the more intense the desire became to just  _let go_. He felt like he was melting. The power was burning hot behind his eyes. His chest was so tight and painful that the tiniest breath was difficult to draw. His headache was piercing. His stomach was light and sick, like he was just beginning the drop of a particularly terrifying roller coaster.

Then, the voices.

His hearing was mostly gone, but he could still hear the yelling. He could still hear footsteps thundering towards him, probably his teammates coming to see if he was okay. Sand sprayed, and then there was a shadowy figure looming above him. He blinked, uncomprehending.

"…Stark? Mr. Stark?"

He laughed breathlessly. Oh, was the universe really so cruel that it was taunting him? Would it really be so merciless that it would curse him with hallucinations as he was quite possibly moments from dying?

The figure drew closer, the shadows retreating, and all Tony could see was a mass of bright white. He smiled at it and wondered if it was that light that all those people talked about, the one that you saw right before you died.

The voice sounded more frantic now. "Mr. Stark! Oh no—"

Coughing. Not from him, from the figure standing over him. He would have been concerned, would have wondered, but his consciousness was hanging by a thread. His  _hands_  hurt. Why did his hands hurt?

"You're hurt," someone else said, but not to him. "Step away, he's not in his right mi—"

"I don't care! Mr. Stark!  _Tony!"_

He tried to raise a hand. His fingers curled, arm beginning to lift from the sand, because he had a feeling that he wanted to touch that bright white light.

"He—he recognizes me!" the first voice gasped. It sounded pained, like its owner was badly injured. "I can help him!"

"Peter,  _no—!"_

The white blob above him moved, stretched out what had to be a hand, and Tony reached for it mindlessly. His entire mind was awash with disorientation and pain, and he just wanted it to  _stop._ He uncurled his fingers, hoping that the white splotch above him would take it all away.

But the instant he made contact, the instant he felt his gloved fingertips meet with those of that white blur, it all went to hell.

There was a surge of blinding  _purple_ , residual energy from the suit stored in his repulsors. Then there was this horrific pain in his stomach, sick and pulsing and  _dark,_ branching out to cover the rest of his body, and he felt an awful tugging behind his eyes that finally,  _mercifully_ , dragged him under.

He gasped, arms falling limp at his sides, and he was gone


	15. Deus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being super late responding to comments last update! It's been a little hectic; today was my first day of the new school year, so I've been running all over the place trying to get everything in order. I have this thing where I always get myself one week ahead in all my coursework so I have some cushion for later on, and this is that super insane week where I do two weeks of work at once. Stressful, but it SUPER pays off later on, especially once finals get here and I have that week where all I have to do is study instead of finish up final papers and projects.
> 
> Anyway, we're nearing the end! Remember that I am taking a break after this one so I can get into the flow of school again, but I'll be back in a bit to finish up the series. I have two more parts planned currently, one following Thor, Loki, and Doctor Strange, and one that brings everyone together for one last showdown against the big bad. But until then, enjoy the (almost) end of this story!

Peter waited for death.

He stayed there, draped over Shuri like a blanket, and he waited. He waited for the beam to hit him and explode, to surround all of them in heat and fire and agony and then snuff them out. He waited to die, because he'd known when he'd started running that he wouldn't survive a direct hit from that weapon. He'd known that he was giving his life in a pointless bid to save Shuri and Steve, and he hadn't cared. He hadn't  _thought_.

He waited for the heat, for the pain, and then the darkness.

It didn't come.

What did come, though, was the explosion.

He felt the exact moment when the beam struck his back, because there was this split second where his world shook and everything went hot and bright and painful and then  _black,_ as his consciousness spotted in and out. But it was  _muted_ somehow, even as a single bolt of agony licked up his back before branching out into his skull and creeping down his limbs. He closed his eyes, held onto Shuri as tight as he could, and tried not to scream as fire and smoke and shrapnel roared all around them. But not touching them, never touching them, and  _why?_

Peter's whole world was pressure and heat and pain as that weapon kept bearing down upon them, the beam lasting forever. The pressure was so intense that he thought he would melt, thought he would crumble away and fade into dust. He thought he was going to die. There was this  _branching_ feeling at his back, like something was being pulled out of him, and the light from the fire and from the sky was quickly dying out as that pulling feeling increased and increased and  _increased_. He barely even felt it when Shuri dug her fingers into his back in pure terror, couldn't quite hear what she was trying to yell to him. His whole world consisted of chaos.

He stayed there, eyes shut tight, and waited to die.

But then, suddenly, the pressure was gone.

The fire was still roaring around them. He could tell from the heat and the crackle of the flames. But…it wasn't hurting them. The pressure had stopped. The weapon wasn't firing anymore.

And they were still alive.

He hardly dared to believe it, for a moment. He thought he'd died, and this was just some strange version of the afterlife where he clung to Shuri and she clung to him, and they filled the space around them with ragged, terrified panting.

But a few moments later nothing had changed, and the fire outside felt like it was slowly dying down, and so Peter opened his eyes.

He was staring into complete darkness. He was confused, because he knew that day was dawning and there should have been fire around them, so it shouldn't have been so dark that he could barely see the outline of Shuri's shoulder jammed against his cheek. But it  _was_  dark. Why was it dark?

Peter slowly pushed himself up. His fingers were still curled into the back of Shuri's shirt, and hers were still crushed to the back of his, like neither of them could get their muscles to relax. When he looked at her, her eyes caught the minimal light and reflected back an expression of pure terror.

"Peter," she whispered.

She sounded scared, but there was something else behind it. Something darker, something more  _personal_.

Like…she was scared of  _him._

Peter frowned, opening his mouth to ask what was wrong, then stopped as he felt something hot and irony pool in his mouth. As if in a dream, he raised a hand to his mouth. His fingers came away red—but white, too. Disoriented and confused, he flexed his fingers and stared at the bleeding colors.

"Peter," Shuri whispered again, and this time she raised a hand. It landed on his shoulder and  _stuck,_ somehow, like there was goop on his skin, like he was  _covered_ in it, like it was hot and sticky and clinging, and he blinked at it. His shoulder was white, too. In the darkness, it shone. He raised his head and looked at her, saw the strange tears in her eyes, and was confused.

Then, suddenly, he wasn't.

In one massive swoop, the kind that started in the bottom of his stomach and swept outwards, the nausea and the pain set in.

He looked down at himself, dazed, and saw nothing but red and white and black. He didn't understand. His head spun, and something dark and hot was leaking down his back, and he fell forward onto Shuri.

She lurched up to catch him with a gasp. "Peter!" she repeated, as if she were unable to say anything else. "Oh, god—Peter—!"

Shuri's hands stuck to him a little, half-cradling him on his side as if she were afraid to put his back to the sand. She looked afraid, and her fear made Peter scared, too.

"You're okay," she whispered, though her voice was shaking. "You're okay, you're fine, we're both fine. Just—take deep breaths for me, okay? I don't understand what's happening and I—oh no—"

Peter's eyes wandered, because he felt a little light headed and a little strange, and he caught sight of the world around him. Or rather, the  _lack_  of a world around him.

He blinked, because he must have seen it wrong. But he hadn't. The world…it was  _gone_. It was all dark, all covered up by this milky white dome that had swallowed the two of them up. Three, including Steve, who was sprawled a few feet away. He still wasn't conscious.

Peter's chest panged, and he reached for the dome. It was only a few feet high, and he was drawn to  _touch_  it, somehow. But—something was  _attached_  to him, these thin strands of sticky substance leading from his back to the dome, hampering his movement, and it took him longer than it should have to realize that the dome was  _him._

The dome was made of the contagion, pulled away from his skin and formed into a shield.

It—it had saved their lives.

He nearly passed out.

"Easy," Shuri soothed, though she still looked terrified. "You're okay, you're—" She gulped. "Peter, how did you do that? How are you  _doing_  that?"

_Doing what?_ he tried to ask, but he couldn't make his lips move. Something was covering his skin, some kind of thin layer like a second skin, and he raised a hand to his face to brush it away. But his fingers just kind of stuck to his skin, and when he really got a good look at them he realized that they really were  _white._ As white as the dome around them, as white as the shoulder he'd noticed earlier, as white as  _all_ of him. His entire body was blindingly, artificially  _white_.

"W-where's the suit?" he whispered, a mixture of stunned and nauseated. Because even though it wasn't  _clear_  anymore, he recognized the contagion. He recognized that the contagion was covering his entire body, that it had responded to his belief that he was about to die and created something incredible.

Shuri gulped, dabbing her fingers at his coated shoulders. "I…" She broke off. "I think this  _is_ the suit."

He stared. "Um…what?" Because he  _knew_  his suit, and his suit wasn't bright white with this delicate black webbing piped all over it. His suit had webshooters. His suit had a mask. His suit had  _Karen_. This was just the contagion, bubbling out around his skin and—and  _ballooning_ , somehow, creating a dome that sealed out the world.

Shuri watched him as if afraid of his reaction. "Peter…" she whispered. "The contagion has  _turned into_  a suit."

He stared, uncomprehending, because that wasn't possible. The contagion wasn't a suit, it was a clear, gloppy mess that refused to listen to him and popped up at the worst of times. It wasn't a suit. It  _wasn't_.

Shuri's fingers brushed to the white goop. It stuck to her fingers a little, but quickly tightened back to his body. The black webbing became more defined, sharpening, following the design of his suit that he had in his mind.

"It responded to your fear," she realized. "You thought you were about to die, and it answered. It…it saved us.  _You_  saved us."

Because…the contagion was him, now, wasn't it? Peter, Venom, the contagion…where did the separation begin? Should he even  _look_  for that separation? This whole time he'd been struggling to draw lines, to define what was him and what was alien. But now he was staring down at his hands, at a material that bubbled and shifted and responded to him, and he wondered if maybe he'd taken the wrong approach.

The contagion was alive. It always had been, and it always would be, even if it didn't  _really_  have a mind of its own. It had instinct. It had  _drive_.

And he wasn't  _meant_  to control it. He  _wasn't_. He was meant to work with it.

The realization sent a cold thrill through him, and he understood.

Earlier, when the dizzy spells had finally drawn to a halt, Shuri had said that the contagion was fully integrated into his body. Now, Peter knew that wasn't the truth.

It hadn't been fully integrated until now, when he accepted it as a part of himself.

He rose to his knees as if in a coma, staring down at the rest of him. His entire body was coated in the contagion, coated in this white goop that fitted perfectly to his skin. It was sleek. It was  _alive_. And now he understood that.

"It's a symbiote," he rasped, remembering what Dr. Cho had called it a long, long time ago, and Shuri frowned.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean—it's a  _symbiote_ , not a parasite. I…I've been trying to control it when I think I should be  _living_  with it. It's supposed to be a two-way relationship, not just me ordering it around. It—it  _understands_ , Shuri. It saved us because it felt my fear, and it reacted."

She stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "You're not making any sense. You're talking like the contagion has a mind, and it doesn't! You're the mind, Peter, you're the one in control."

And he just shook his head, because he didn't know how to explain. He didn't know how to explain that he understood, now, that it was both alive and not, conscious and not. He understood how to work with the contagion. How to shape it, how to mold it, and how to give it something, too. How to keep it alive.

A two-way relationship. One where it protected him, and he gave it somewhere safe to live. One where he understood, and it understood, and they were one.

He looked up, and the disorientation began to fade. When he raised a hand, the dome around them slowly began to melt.

It was easy. He felt, the contagion interpreted, decided what he needed, and began to act.

Shuri's eyes went wide. "Peter! Peter, you're controlling it!

He smiled, a detached sort of thing, and shook his head. "No. We're working together."

The contagion bubbled as if in agreement, and the dome crept down his fingertips and melted back into his skin. Almost immediately, sand poured down around them. They'd been buried by the explosion.

Peter rose, and wearing the white Spider-Man suit was the most natural thing in the world. He felt…peaceful, almost, even as he stood in the middle of a massive crater with fire crackling all around him. He felt like he finally knew who he was, and what he had to do.

Shuri staggered up behind him, and he reached to steady her before she could fall over. He felt exhilarated. His injuries were still there, still throbbing and bleeding and worsening, but he knew he was going to be okay. The contagion would heal him, and he would keep it safe in return. He would give it a home.

It was a strange feeling, that of symbiosis.

Then Shuri gasped, and he realized what was going on in front of him.

There was a bright streak of purple in the air. Purple everywhere, flashing from side to side, demolishing  _everything_. A beam of purple struck the canon that had tried to kill Peter, Shuri, and Steve, and immediately it crashed in flames. Another beam struck the base, and it began to crumble. Then another still, and another, then more and more and more as rubble flew and fire spewed and smoke billowed into the early morning air.

Peter nearly choked as he realized that the purple was coming from what looked like a new version of the Iron-Man suit.

Tony was killing them all. He was killing HYDRA.

"No!" Peter gasped, because Tony wasn't supposed to kill, he was supposed to  _save_. He took a step forward, opening his mouth to call for him to stop, then realized that he didn't have access to the coms. The explosion had blown his old suit to pieces, and his earpiece was among them. He had no way of contacting Tony.

Then Tony stopped.

There was this awful moment where Tony hung there, arms raised, and didn't do a thing. Smoke and fire was all around him as the last of the rubble settled into the sand, but he didn't move. He didn't even turn his head.

He paused, unmoving, and then he dropped like a stone.

Peter cried out in alarm, already running, but he knew he'd be too late. Tony was careening toward the ground, thrusters firing just enough to keep him from reaching deadly speeds, and the he was hitting the sand and lying there an unmoving lump.

Peter didn't know what was wrong. He was confused, because he'd never seen that suit before and he didn't understand where the purple had come from, but it seemed like Tony was in pain and he had to  _stop it_. He had to make sure Tony was okay. Was this the suit's fault? Was it killing him, like the original arc reactor had begun to kill him all those years ago?

Tony moved as Peter scrambled across the sand, reaching for first his greaves and then his helmet and then his chestplate, letting the pieces fall away. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he caught a glint of purple as Tony's chestplate hit the sand. Like something had been dislodged, and something powerful at that. He could feel it from all the way across the dune.

Tony swayed and collapsed, and Peter ran faster.

"Mr. Stark!" he yelled as he approached, losing traction in the loose sand. "Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark, I'm here!"

There was no response, as Peter skittered to a halt and dropped to his knees beside Tony's body. His eyes were open, and he was breathing hard, but he didn't seem coherent. Peter leaned over him, horrified.

"Please," he whispered, putting his hands on Tony's shoulders and shaking him lightly. He had no idea what that suit had done to him, but it wasn't good. "Please, Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark— _Tony_ , please!"

There were footsteps behind him. Shuri, finally reaching his position. She looked like she was half a beat from passing out, but she was there. "Peter!" she gasped. "You're hurt, you have to step away—he's not in his right mind, we don't know what he could do!"

He didn't listen. He sealed a palm to Tony's cheek, tilting his head and forcing him to make eye contact. But…there was nothing. Nothing in his eyes but blank, empty mindlessness. There were no visible wounds, but it was clear that he was badly injured.

There were more footsteps. When he looked up, he saw the rest of the team running for him.

"Peter?" Natasha called, stunned. "How—?"

"Please!" he burst out, gripping Tony's shoulder with frantic urgency. "You have to help him, he's not okay! Please…"

The rest of the Avengers drew to a halt beside him, each of them looking more alarmed than the last.

"Where is Steve?" Bucky asked. "Is he safe, too?"

"Tony could be dying, and you want to know about Captain Rogers?" Peter asked hysterically. Then he realized that he'd used Tony's real name again, and he spluttered, "I mean—Mr. Stark!"

Shuri nodded to Bucky. "He's over that dune. Alive, but not safe. Go to him."

Bucky ran off, and Wanda and Natasha knelt beside Peter. "The suit was hurting him," Natasha explained in a hushed tone. "He…he was consumed by it. He was so  _hateful_ …"

Peter choked back tears. "You'll be okay," he whispered to Tony, though he wasn't sure it was true. "I'll help you, you're going to be okay…"

Tony raised a hand as if in a dream. His arm wobbled and shook as he did it, fingers shaking like leaves in a storm, but he managed it. He was looking at Peter— _through_  him, even—and he felt a spark of hope. Maybe Tony  _could_  hear him. Maybe…

Wanda sucked in a sharp breath as Peter reached for that hand. "Peter, no—!"

But it was too late. Peter hadn't considered the fact that maybe some of that power was still in Tony's gloves, the ones he hadn't removed, and he reached out and grabbed his hand without a care in the world.

Even the contagion couldn't react fast enough to stop what happened next.

There was a flash of blinding purple, a bolt of shock and pain, and then everything shut down.

 

* * *

 

The world was deathly quiet.

Shuri stood in the heat of the morning sun and crossed her arms, staring out across the destruction. The HYDRA base had been decimated, Peter, Tony, and Steve were down, and those still on their feet could do nothing but wait for the other Avengers to arrive.

The past few days…they'd passed in a blur. And then the past few hours had passed in even  _more_  of a blur, as they fought to escape the base and take it down, and soon enough it was over. Shuri couldn't remember the last time she'd been as exhausted as she was now, standing at the top of that dune and watching the scene below. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so  _drained_.

But the others—they looked even more drained than she felt.

Bucky had found Steve, and had dragged him to cover. The man was still bleeding from the chest, still in danger, but Bucky and Shuri both had done their best to patch him up. He'd be fine. Likewise, Natasha—who had been hit across the head by a chunk of metal during Tony's rampage—had been moved to safety and patched up. She, too, would be okay. Wanda and Bucky, though a little beat up, had suffered no serious injuries, and neither had Shuri herself.

The others, though…

Peter had been laid out with the others. When he'd touched Tony's hand, there had been an explosion that had knocked him clean out, and he still wasn't awake. He didn't seem to be in danger of dying—he'd sustained a sizable wound in his stomach immediately after the blast, but he'd already begun to heal up—but it was still scary, seeing him lying there. When that beam of purple had hit him, his eyes had gone so wide and  _pained_ …

Shuri shivered. She was strong, but that didn't mean she didn't balk at the thought of the pain these people had been put through today. Of the Avengers that had gone into battle, none had emerged unharmed. One of them might not even live.

Shuri had been pointedly avoiding thinking about Tony. But he was there, and large stretches of his skin had these strange, faint lightning bolt marks across it from using the prototype suit. He too was unconscious, but in much worse condition. No one was quite sure how bad it was, but they could all tell that it  _was_  bad. Whatever that purple stone was, it clearly wasn't meant to be used the way he'd used it.

Maybe it wasn't meant to be used at all.

The stone was sitting inside the arc reactor now, which was set carefully next to Tony. No one wanted to touch it after what it had done. Hopefully after today, no one would touch it ever again. They'd lock it away where no one could get their hands on it, and that would be that. It was clearly too dangerous to experiment on.

"Hey!" came Wanda's voice from the wreckage, and Shuri raised her head in surprise. "I found it!"

Wanda appeared with the gauntlet, a little singed but ultimately no worse for wear. She wasn't touching it, since apparently it burned anyone who tried, and so she carried it up the dune in a wreath of scarlet. She set it down beside Steve and nodded, stepping back.

"Where are the other Avengers?" Bucky asked, looking to the sky. "We need medical attention  _now_."

Shuri lowered herself down in between Peter and Tony, keeping a watchful eye over them. Peter's organic suit had retreated, leaving him dressed in the tatters of the blue and red one, and without the protective covering he looked worse than ever. The wound caused by Tony's unintentional attack was glaring, bloody and hard to look at because some of that clear, gel-like substance was leaking into it to help seal it up. Shuri remembered vaguely how Peter had seemed so at peace in that moment, before he'd been hit with that strange purple energy, and she looked away. He'd claimed that he'd finally figured it out, how to live with the contagion and work together to take out their common foes. But then it hadn't mattered, because of Tony.

But—she knew it wasn't Tony's fault. He'd had no choice but to use the suit to help them. He hadn't known how severe the side effects would be.

Shuri hugged her knees to her chest and sat there in that suffocating silence. HYDRA was gone for good. It should have been a happy moment. But with so many of them injured…

Wanda raised her head suddenly. "They're coming."

Shuri listened, but she couldn't hear the plane's engines just yet. Wanda must have been sensing them from quite a ways off.

"They'd better hurry," Bucky said in a low tone. "Steve and Tony are both badly injured, and we don't know what's going on with Peter."

"The goop," Natasha said, though she looked like she was having a hard time concentrating. "We knew it had come back, but…that was intense."

"It looked like it had become a second skin," Wanda agreed, staring at the ground. She looked haunted. "Has he fallen to Venom once again?"

Shuri shook her head. "No," she tried, "he hasn't. There's…just a lot to explain before you can even begin to understand what just happened to him."

Natasha reached out a hand, settling it atop Peter's. He didn't react in the slightest. "As long as he's safe. As long as  _everyone_  is safe."

"He is—I mean, we  _all_  are. But he'll probably want to explain everything himself. After today, even I'm not quite sure what's going on." Because Peter had sounded so different, talking about the difference between control and cooperation, and she couldn't say for sure what he'd been thinking. He still seemed like himself, but…different, too. Like he understood something about himself, something he hadn't understood before. She could only hope that that understanding would bring him closure about his new powers, and about what they would mean for his future.

Above them, plane engines were beginning to sound in the distance. The rest of the Avengers were almost there.

They stood up when the plane came into view, stepping out from beneath cover and waiting for the Avengers to spot them. Within minutes the plane was landing some distance away, whipping sand into their faces, and minutes after that the other Avengers were appearing over the dune.

"Wanda!" Vision called, flying to reach them first. He landed delicately in the sand, eyes wide, and looked them all over. "Oh, no—what happened here?"

"Long story," Wanda said, wearily but happily, as she reached out to hug him.

Footsteps sounded, and then Clint and Sam were drawing up beside them. Sam whistled, low and impressed, as he took in the destruction. " _Damn_. This must have been quite the fight."

"That's one word for it," Shuri said, never taking her eyes off of Peter and Tony. The former was beginning to look better, while the latter was beginning to look worse.

Clint helped Natasha to her feet, eyeing her head wound critically. "The plane is just over the rise," he said. "Anything else we need to do here, or are we good to leave and send S.H.I.E.L.D. in for cleanup?"

"All we have to do now is get the team to safety." Wanda motioned to where Peter, Tony, and Steve were stretched out in the sand. "Peter is already healing, but Tony and Steve are in bad shape. Are there medical supplies on the plane?"

"Enough to heal a small army," Clint joked. "Come on, let's get these guys back to the plane. We'll be back in New York in no time."

Vision stooped and picked Steve up, rising gingerly into the air and starting to fly back towards the plane. Wanda reached out a hand and floated Tony into the air, even though she looked completely exhausted while doing it. Clint, keeping an arm threaded around Natasha to keep her from falling over, began to lead her in the right direction.

Bucky laid a hand on Shuri's shoulder. "Here," he said, "I'll help you with the kid."

Really, Shuri felt like  _she_  was more helping  _him_  than the other way around. Bucky hooked his metal arm beneath Peter's shoulders and lifted, Shuri did her best to support his legs, and then they were off.

They moved everyone onto the plane. Then they moved everyone into the infirmary aboard that plane, and then they were doing their best to get everyone bandaged and stitched up as the plane began to fly itself back to New York.

It was a stressful flight, with so many of them injured.

And when they got back to the compound, something even more stressful was waiting.


	16. Nevermore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end! I do worry that some of you will be a little turned off by the way this turned out, but I stand by it as a good indicator of character development and the beginning of a potential storyline for future installments. Peter and Tony's conversation at the end of this is one of my favorite scenes in the whole series, actually! Very fun to write.
> 
> Enjoy the final chapter!

Peter's dreams were filled with ash.

He existed fitfully for a while, lingering in between wakefulness and unconsciousness. He had a vague sense of awareness, one that let him catch blurry glimpses of the world around him, but other than that he was completely blind. He didn't know where he was, what was going on, or if he was okay.

Or…or if  _Tony_  was okay.

He kept seeing it over and over again. That split second where Tony reached for him, and then there was this purple flash before it all went dark. Then…just fire and ash and smoke. All of it, swirling around him and dragging him under and  _keeping_ him there.

There was this purple glow behind it all, he realized after a while. He wasn't sure what it meant. But it was there after every nightmare, every vision, and so he came to believe that it was important.

He saw things in the purple. When he dared to look directly at it, he was hit with the most vivid visions he'd ever experienced. He saw  _everything._ Things like the Iron Man suit, but glowing red instead of purple. Things like a glowing yellow shield, a chip of stone in the center that looked suspiciously similar to the stone in the center of Steve's gauntlet. Things like a  _green_ stone, one he hadn't seen before, trapped inside a strange amulet. There were others, too, but he lost track after a while. The edge of consciousness was disorientating, and before long he was caught up in a mesh of color and sound and emotion.

Something he didn't forget, though, was the dream where he looked down at his hands and watched them crumble away into ash.

It…felt a little too real. A little too  _imminent_.

He didn't like to dwell on that dream, so he moved on. Then he moved on again, then again, until he'd seen a hundred worlds and had a thousand visions. And amidst it all…there was only one other thing he remembered before he opened his eyes and rejoined the living world.

He remembered the warship hanging over earth—and its captain, staring them down with the face of death himself.

Then his eyes were open, and he was back in the land of the living.

No one was there when he first awoke. When his eyes finally opened and he got a good look at his surroundings, he saw nothing but the bright white walls of the compound's infirmary. He'd been there often enough to recognize them by now. There wasn't a soul in sight—not even Dr. Cho, worrying over the monitor above his head—and so he had a moment to breathe and think and relax.

It came back to him. All of it, in waves, until he remembered. The fight, the superweapon, the explosion…all of it.

The  _contagion_.

Peter moved to prop himself up in bed, and was pleased to find that he didn't hurt. There were no visible wounds, and it didn't seem like anything was broken or internally damaged, so he didn't hesitate in getting himself sat upright. He was dressed in a hospital gown, one of those green paper ones. The contagion was no longer attached to his skin.

But…when he put a hand over his chest, he felt it there. Pulling, just beneath the surface, responding to his thoughts. When he raised that same hand and curled his fingers, the stuff beaded in his palm. When he uncurled them, it retreated back into the skin.

It had taken some time. But now he finally understood.

Peter swung his legs over the side of the cot and stood, stretching himself out. He had no idea how long he'd been unconscious, but he was more than ready to move around. And with his heightened healing, he was well enough to do just that.

He was also well enough to  _worry_ , which was less fun. Now that he was back on his feet, he was thinking about Tony and Steve and Shuri and the rest of the team, and everything that had happened after he'd been knocked unconscious. The last time he'd seen them, things hadn't looked good. On top of that, he had no idea how long it had been since the fight. It could have been hours or weeks.

Either way, there was just a touch of fear resting at the bottom of his stomach.

Peter took a few steps, testing his balance, and was pleased to find that everything was working as it should have been. After having spent so much of the past few weeks sick, injured, or unconscious, it was something of a small miracle to actually feel  _good_. The contagion had settled, HYDRA was gone, and for once everything seemed to be looking up.

Well—looking up, assuming that everyone else was okay.

Peter stepped out of the infirmary. The compound was strangely quiet. The lights were slightly dimmed, and even his enhanced hearing couldn't pick up anything but the dull clanking of his own footsteps as he walked. It was eerie. Like he was the only one around for miles, walking right into a ghost town. Or, ghost compound? Either way, it was unsettling.

When he reached the end of the hall and turned in the direction of Bruce's lab, he stopped. He…heard something.

''…could be on his way here right now, okay, and we need to do  _something._  I—I need a ship, and then I could go and find my friends, and then we might be able to figure something out!"

Peter frowned. He…didn't know that voice. Straining his ears, he began to move closer.

"Calm down," said another voice, one that sounded like Bruce. But the rest of what he had to say was lost in a mishmash of voices. It sounded like the entire  _team_  was in there.

"No,  _you_  calm down, goddamn it! Just— _look_. We probably don't have long. I've told you guys a hundred times that we have to act now, before he gets here and wrecks half your planet!"

Okay, now Peter was even more alarmed. He crept forward, hesitant, and peered subtly into the doorway of the lab. And sure enough, he saw most of the team gathered around the cot against the back wall. He couldn't see whoever was on the cot because he was being blocked out by the Avengers (sans Steve and Tony, which made him even more anxious than before), but he could hear him continuing to talk. He sounded…scared. Terrified, even, like he'd seen something he could never shake, done things he'd never be able to undo.

The man went on in a low voice, "As long as the power stone is on earth, you're in danger. I've dealt with these guys, and they're no joke. They'll kill you. They'll kill  _anyone_  who gets in their way."

_The power stone? What…?_

Peter took another step. But he must have made a noise, because suddenly the team was whipping around in alarm and staring him down. They  _all_  looked afraid. Even Vision, ever the unflappable android, was wearing an expression of agitation.

Then, "Peter!"

Natasha moved forward first, Wanda close behind. The others all shifted accordingly, shuffling in response to the scare, and suddenly there was a gap in the crowd and he could see the mysterious man.

He looked—in a word— _haunted_. There was loss in his eyes, loss so dire that for a long moment Peter couldn't look away. But then he did look away, forcing himself to look at the rest of him, and he was taken aback by now strangely inhuman the man looked. Well, he was clearly  _human,_ but there was something unearthly about him. Peter wasn't sure what it was. But when they made eye contact, he  _saw_  it. That man…he was something Peter had never seen before.

Then he was being obscured again by the rest of the team, and Peter lost sight of him.

"You shouldn't be walking around so soon," Bruce said, pushing through the crowd. "We're still not sure what happened to you back there; we need to run more tests before—!"

Peter cut him off. "I'm fine, Dr. Banner. Really, I am."

"No, we have to run further tests!"

"We don't," Peter said, and he was surer of himself than he'd ever been. "I'm okay. Great, actually."

Bruce just shook his head, tense. "How can you know that? Shuri told us that the contagion formed some kind of suit around you; we have to make sure it's not dangerous! We have no idea what's happening to you."

_"I_  know," Peter said. "Or—I know enough. I don't think there have to be any more tests."

Bruce was staring at him like he was insane, but Peter was resolved. He felt confident now that the contagion was  _him,_ was ready to work with him, and that there was nothing to fear. Venom had been gone for a long time. Peter was back in control, and he always would be.

"Peter," Natasha said softly, "why don't I take you to go see Tony? He's not awake just yet, but he could be soon."

Just like that, Peter's mind was taken off the strange man. "Mr. Stark is okay?" he asked, voice shaking. Because he'd hoped, but he hadn't seen any sign of Tony in the infirmary and he'd been worried.

Natasha shot a glance at the other Avengers. Then, to Peter, "I'll explain on the way. Come on, let's get out of here."

They left, and nervousness settled in Peter's stomach.

"Hey," he said as Natasha led him along. "Is…everything okay? That's the guy that crashed in the spaceship, right? What was he saying?"

Natasha hesitated, then admitted, "Well…we're not quite sure what's happening. That man's name is Peter Quill, and he just woke up a few hours ago. We can't confirm what he's said so far, and I don't want to worry you if he's lying, but…if he's telling the truth…" She shivered. "We could have a global catastrophe coming our way."

Peter's blood ran cold. "What?" he whispered.

She looked away quickly, like she hadn't meant to say that much. "You don't have to worry about it yet. Quill could be lying, or he could just be wrong, or…I don't know. Let's just wait until we can confirm his claims before we start thinking about what comes next. For now, all you should think about is recovering, running those tests Bruce told you about, and getting back to school."

"School?" he echoed. "Wait, how long have I been out? Am I missing school right now?"

"Well—just a little."

He stared. Then he pinched at the bridge of his nose in an attempt to quell a rising headache. If school had started then he'd have to go back immediately, and then he'd have to catch up on whatever work he'd missed, and he'd have to put up with Flash's teasing…his chest constricted just thinking about it.

Natasha seemed to sense his panic. "You'll be okay," she said. "The school thinks you're out because of a medical emergency, so you can take as much time as you like. We can have your schoolwork delivered here, and if you're not feeling up to it then I'm sure the team can help you out."

Peter couldn't help but smile. "The Avengers are going to do my homework for me?"

"If that's what it takes, I'll solve as many algebra problems as you need."

"I'm actually in advanced calculus now," Peter said with a weak laugh.

Natasha blinked. Then she threw up her hands and declared, "Well, that's it—you're on your own!"

He snorted. "It's okay, I'm sure Mr. Stark can help if I get stuck."

…But that just made him feel sad again, because he didn't know what condition Tony was in or even what had  _happened_  to him during that battle.

The mood dropped as they kept walking. Eventually they reached what looked like Tony's quarters, which was at least a good sign because if he'd been in critical condition then he would have been down in the infirmary or the lab. Natasha pushed the door open, then stepped back to let Peter through.

"You're not coming?" Peter asked, when she didn't follow him inside.

Natasha shook her head. "I have to get back to Quill. Pepper and Shuri are here, so you won't be alone. And of course, if you start to feel anything strange then you should contact us immediately. We all heard Shuri's report. We know a little about what happened to you during the fight, and we just want you to be safe."

After the past few weeks, Peter knew it was going to take a lot of work to make everyone believe he was okay. "I'll call you if anything happens," he said. "But really, I'm okay. I understand my powers now."

She didn't look entirely convinced, but that was okay. It would take time.

Natasha left, and Peter made his way further into Tony's quarters. Only then did it occur to him that he hadn't asked about Steve, and he immediately felt bad. He hoped he was okay.

His hearing picked up on the sound of low voices in the other room, and he followed them. It didn't take long to find an open door, and he went to it immediately.

He paused in the doorway to take in the scene. Shuri and Pepper were sitting on a couch in the corner, speaking in low tones, but that wasn't what he was focused on. He was focused on  _Tony_.

Tony was stretched out on the bed against the far wall, covered by a sheet up to his stomach. There were a few needles in his arm and groupings of sensors attached to his skin, and all up and down his arms Peter could see these faint  _cracks,_ like little bands of scarring across his skin. It didn't extend onto his chest, which was bare save for a set of bandages over his heart and over one half of his ribcage, but it was still alarming. What was it? What had  _happened_  to him?

Peter stepped fully into the room, purposefully making enough noise to get himself noticed. "Hey," he said when Shuri and Pepper looked up.

Shuri was on her feet in a heartbeat. "Peter, you're awake! I told them to contact me the instant your eyes opened—why didn't they?"

He shrugged painfully. "They didn't know until a few minutes ago. No one was there when I woke up."

Shuri muttered a litany of curses under her breath. "What are they thinking? We don't know how the contagion has affected you, and they just left you alone?"

Peter moved further into the room, ignoring the comment. "I'll be fine. But…how is Mr. Stark?"

"Stable," was the simple response. Pepper rose, hands clasped in front of her, expression one of pained nervousness. "Peter, I'm glad you're okay."

"Yeah, me too." He walked right up to Tony's bed, looking down at him. From this close the cracks looked more like lightning bolt scars, slightly raised and stretching from elbow to fingertip on both arms. It had to be the result of that strange purple energy. "You said he's stable?"

"Completely stable," Pepper confirmed. "Conscious, on the other hand, he is not."

That much was obvious. It didn't look like he'd been awake for quite some time. "How long has he been out?"

Shuri answered, "It's only been a day. Your powers were already healing you before we even arrived, so it didn't take long for you to wake up. Though, the rest of the team is highly concerned about my report on your new abilities. They saw you covered in the contagion, after all, and once I explained it they were hardly reassured. I'll admit, I'm not very reassured myself. I'm…not quite sure I understand what happened."

"Well…" Peter raised a hand, and the contagion covered it in a heartbeat. "I can control it now. Or, actually it's a lot more complicated than that. But it  _listens_ to me and keeps me safe, and I give it somewhere to— _live_ , I guess, and we work together. We're the same."

"Peter…" Shuri shook her head, disturbed. "You're worrying me. It's as I said on the battlefield—you're talking as if the contagion has a mind of its own, when we've already determined that you are in control."

"No," Peter said. "God—how can I explain it? It's like…the contagion is my subconscious. It's me, but sometimes it feels like it has a mind of its own because it's responding to thoughts I don't know I'm having. Does…does that make sense? And the subconscious and the conscious have to work together, otherwise I think I'll end up getting those dizzy spells again."

"Peter—"

"I know it sounds weird!" he cut her off. "And I'm not sure if I'm getting it totally right. All I know is that I understand it now, on some deeper level, and I know I'm going to be okay. The contagion isn't going to hurt me again." And it was true. He wasn't entirely certain how it worked, but he felt like he'd found peace. Like, he respected rather than feared the contagion, and it had finally settled into him, and everything was okay.

Shuri watched him with a frown. "I'm not sure about this. But…I trust your judgment. You did save my life, after all. But if anything goes wrong, if you feel  _anything_  strange…"

"I'll tell you immediately," he promised. Then, turning his focus back on Tony, "Do you know what happened to him? I mean—what was that suit? The one with the purple all over it."

Shuri and Pepper exchanged glances. Clearly they'd already discussed this, and they weren't happy about it.

"Tony went against my direct wishes," Pepper said finally, curling her fingers into fists. "I—I told him not to use that suit, not to  _make_ that suit, but he still did it. He…" She trailed off, swaying on her feet.

Shuri was at her side immediately, a comforting hand on her shoulder. "He'll be fine," she assured her. "I saw to his surgery myself; he'll awaken in no time at all."

Peter choked. "Surgery?"

More quick glances. Then Shuri was saying, "Peter, do you remember that strange purple stone?"

"Of course."

"Well…Stark was trying to work that stone into one of his suits."

He froze, horrified. He… _remembered_  that suit. During those first few nights in the infirmary, he'd helped Tony work on it.

Shuri looked away. "I warned him that using it could be deadly, but it was the only option. His arc reactor was damaged, and he needed a suit with one built in. The prototype suit had just that, so he called it and he used it and it tried very hard to kill him."

"I warned him," Pepper whispered. "I warned him not to create that thing."

"It's likely we would have been killed without it," Shuri said. Then, continuing, "But it extracted a heavy toll. There were dampeners in place to absorb excess power, but they failed. The power was pumped into Stark's body, and it was too much to handle. He dipped close to death, but after a minor heart surgery we managed to get everything working again."

_Heart surgery?_

Pepper covered her mouth and stared determinedly at the ground. Her eyes were shining.

"He's going to make a full recovery," Shuri went on, gently. "I know it's still frightening, but he'll be back to normal in no time."

Peter stared at the bandages over Tony's heart. They seemed far more grim, now that he knew what they were hiding.

"We're retiring the prototype suit," Shuri told him. "Whether Stark likes it or not, it's too dangerous for anyone to use. Perhaps if we could perfect the dampeners, then—" She cut herself off, seeing Pepper's horrified expression. "But no…that suit is best left alone. We'll put the purple stone into containment and not let it back into Stark's hands."

Peter had helped create that suit. He knew that it wasn't his fault, not by any stretch of the imagination, but…it still didn't feel good. Tony had tried to create a superweapon of his own, and it had nearly killed him. It had nearly killed all of them.

Shuri murmured, "It hit you, too."

He paused. "Uh…what?"

"The suit," she clarified. "I—don't know how much you remember. But you reached for Tony's hand, and when you made contact the residual power in Stark's gauntlets went off and struck you in the chest. Without the contagion, it quite possibly would have killed you. Luckily the contagion took the brunt of it, and you emerged mostly unscathed."

That…was a lot to process.

Pepper sniffed, and Peter realized she was trying not to cry. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just…" She swallowed hard. "Tony promised we would go on vacation after this, and now, with his injuries and with our guest finally awake—"

"Quill," Peter supplied.

Pepper put her hands over her face. When she spoke, her voice was muffled. "I want this to end. Maybe that's selfish of me, but…"

"No!" Peter said quickly. "Mrs. Potts—that's not selfish at all. You…you care about Mr. Stark, and you want to keep him safe, and it's upsetting that you can't. You want him to stop, but you know he can't." His voice grew tight, and he clenched a fist over his chest. "I…understand."

She looked up at him, eyes watering. "Of course you do," she laughed shakily. "I should have known."

Peter took a tentative step closer, holding out a nervous hand. She took it, squeezing his fingers between hers, and tried determinedly not to cry. Peter could tell, because she was shaking.

Shuri drew up at his other side, and Peter looked to her in surprise. Her expression was firm, but she was trembling just slightly as she raised a hand and placed it on his forearm. Not quite committing to holding his hand, but suggesting it. There was a spark of warmth in his chest despite the grim circumstances, and he smiled.

"He'll wake up soon," Shuri said again, trying to reassure the two of them. "And once he does, we'll have a lot of talking to do."

Peter knew they'd have more talking to do before that, though. Quill was awake, and if Natasha's comments were anything to go off of, he wasn't telling them anything good. But he didn't say anything about that just yet, because he didn't want to worry Pepper any further.

So for that moment, he let himself stand there with his friends and his family, and he relaxed.

 

* * *

 

Peter eventually found out what Quill had to say.

He didn't like it.

 

* * *

 

Tony was floating.

There was purple everywhere. That was the one constant in his floating state, the one thing that never seemed to leave. No matter what he was seeing, what state of consciousness he was in, the purple was always there. Always lurking in the back of his mind, whispering poisonous things. Things like he'd heard when he'd lost himself, firing with abandon on the HYDRA base.

He stayed that way for what felt like a long time. Drifting along in a purple haze, struggling to forget what he'd done. Struggling to forget how Peter had been wiped out in one massive blast. Struggling to forget how he'd died there in the sand, because Tony hadn't been strong enough.

Peter was gone. And it was his fault.

_Again_.

So when his eyes finally opened some time later, he couldn't bring himself to be happy that he'd regained consciousness.

The world returned to him in fragments. The purple was lingering but beginning to fade, more and more as he tried to open his eyes, though the memories weren't so kind. They only became more and more vivid as he returned to the waking world.

The first thing he saw was bright white, like that figure that had loomed above him just before he'd lost consciousness. He knew that it had to be the ceiling, but he couldn't turn his head to find out. Instead he was left to focus on other senses, like his hearing.

He could hear voices. Muted, but he could tell they were tense and alarmed. He could also hear this beeping, like the droning of a heart monitor, and he realized that he was probably in the infirmary. Or at least, a room that was passing for one.

He was alive, then. He knew he'd be glad for that, eventually. But right now, all he felt was pain. And not just emotional pain, either—his chest was  _killing_ him, and he still had that pounding headache right behind his eyes. It reminded him of just before he'd passed out, when the stone had overloaded his body and he hadn't been able to keep his eyes open.

The voices were growing closer.

Tony tried to move and just barely managed to tilt his head. Oh—he was in his  _bedroom_. A couch had been shoved into the room, and things had been shuffled around to fit a few spare monitors inside, but it was definitely his bedroom. No one was in it.

Tony quickly resigned himself to being unable to move. Unfortunately that just meant he was forced to lie there and think about everything that had happened before he'd passed out. And…if he had to relive that awful moment one more time, the moment where that canon had turned on Peter and blasted him out of existence, he thought he would go insane. If he had to remember using the prototype suit for one moment further, remember the way his whole body had  _burned_ …

There were footsteps in the doorway, and then two people were walking in.

"Quill has made it very clear that we have limited options," one voice said, and Tony's hearing was too garbled to make out who it was. "Things would be complicated enough if we only had the power stone, but as far as we know there are at least two stones on earth and we can't get rid of the one attached to Vision's forehead! The Black Order will show up here sooner or later tracking Quill's pod, and we won't be able to fight off an entire armada. Not if they're as bad as Quill says. And that's not even counting the real villain, the so-called Mad Titan!"

A second voice chimed in, "We'll think of something. It sounds bad, but once Mr. Stark wakes up I'm sure he'll have some ideas."

"Peter," the first voice said, and Tony knew he'd heard it wrong because Peter was  _gone_ , he'd seen it  _happen_. "Our situation is far direr than we first suspected. HYDRA is gone but the Black Order is very much a present threat, and there's only so much we can do to stop them. The stones have to be sent off world."

"The Black Order will still show up to track Quill's pod," the second voice insisted. "I…oh, god…"

There was a pause. Then, "This is bad. This is far worse than we ever could have imagined."

"You're telling me." The voice was shaking. "God, Shuri, I just wanted a break. I have to go back to school! I can't go back knowing that the entire universe could be hanging in the balance!"

"We were all looking forward to a break," she said, sounding miserable and tense. "But now we can't have it. The Black Order is coming. Th— _Thanos_  is coming. And we have to be ready."

The second voice made this tiny, defeated sound. "I…I don't know what to do."

A sigh. Then, "None of us know what to do. I'm still waiting for my brother to respond, but once he does I'm sure he'll have some ideas."

"But you've already been here so long. I'm sure Wakanda needs you, and—"

"Peter, no. It's true that I've been away for some time now, but right now I'm needed  _here_. I'm going to stay and help you."

There was that name again. Peter was  _gone_. Why was the universe  _taunting_  him?

There was a pause, heavy with tension, before the second voice was speaking again. "Thank you, Shuri." He sounded small, almost meek.  _Afraid_.

"Now," the first voice said gently, "let's go in there and relax for a while. We can keep an eye on Stark and get a break from all the chaos out in the compound. Deal?"

There was a short laugh, but it sounded tight. "Deal. We can—oh my god—Shuri!"

"Hmm?"

"His eyes are open!"

There was a sharp gasp, and then Tony's vision was being taken up by a dark, blurry shape. He couldn't quite make out what it was, though, because the motion had suddenly made him feel nauseous. Clearly he wasn't entirely healed.

Something landed on his shoulder. He thought it was a hand. "Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark, can you hear me?"

It… _sounded_ like Peter. A moment ago Tony had been certain that he was still in the land of the living, but now he wasn't so sure—because if he could hear Peter, then surely he was dead too. Surely they were both dead.

Oh, man. Pepper was going to be furious that he'd gone off and died in a suit she'd  _specifically_  told him not to make.

The shadow was beginning to sharpen. Bit by bit, inch by inch, until he could make out a messy head of brown hair, then vaguely blurry ovals that were probably eyes.

"Hey," the voice said, directly above him. "Mr. Stark? You've been out for days, please wake up!"

He blinked hard, and the shape sharpened even further. Something clicked in his head, something confusing and just slightly upsetting, and he finally managed to move.

Tony raised a hand, halting and pained though it was, and reached for the figure above him.

"Oh, hey—Mr. Stark, can you understand me right now?"

Another hand caught his, and he realized how  _cold_  he was. Then there was another hand, warm against his shoulder, and the figure was leaning closer. Those few extra inches of closeness finally brought everything into focus, and then he knew he was dead. The suit had killed him, and this was some sort of afterlife where Peter Parker patted his shoulder awkwardly and asked if he was okay.

He parted his lips to speak and immediately started coughing.

"Oh no—Shuri, can you—?"

"Already on it!" There were footsteps, and then there was a straw pressed against his lips. He had the presence of mind to take a few sips of water before it was drawn away, and then his voice was working again. Or,  _almost_  working again.

"K-kid…?"

Peter looked like he might explode from happiness. "Mr. Stark, you're awake!"

_I'm dead,_ he thought miserably.

"Hang on," Peter said, "I'll prop you up."

There was a lot of shuffling. Then Tony was being leaned up against a mountain of pillows, and he finally had the leverage to look out and realize that this really was his room. He was in his bedroom in the compound.

He also had the leverage to see Shuri, standing quietly at the foot of his bed. Had she died too? How many others were here?

"How are you feeling?" Peter asked nervously. "You've been sleeping for a long time, and we weren't sure you'd wake up."

"Well…" Tony winced, his voice dragging painfully against the back of his throat. "For being dead…" He coughed. "I'm f-feeling pretty good."

Peter balked. "Dead? Mr. Stark, you're not dead. You're totally alive!"

He stared. "Nice try. You're—" He coughed again, trying to clear his throat. "You're  _gone._ I saw you die."

Peter immediately looked guilty. "Um…yeah, about that…I know it looked bad from your angle, but that canon didn't kill me. It kind of buried me, sure, but…I lived. We all lived."

"No." Because that couldn't be true, he'd  _seen_ it happen. He'd found the scrap of cloth in the sand. He'd— _seen_  it.

"Yes," Peter said simply. "Sorry, I know this is probably jarring, but you're okay! Everyone is okay! The suit with the power stone knocked you out, but you had surgery and rested for a few days and you're going to be fine."

"But—" He waved a hand groggily in Peter's direction. "The  _canon_."

Peter and Shuri exchanged a quick glance. Then Peter said, "That whole thing is kind of a long story. You should probably wait until you're totally healed to hear it; I don't want to give you a heart attack. But—I'm fine, Mr. Stark, really! Everyone is fine."

That answered approximately none of his questions. But his eyes felt heavy, exhaustion was trying to drag him back under, and he didn't have the strength to ask anything more.

Peter seemed to understand. "You should rest more," he said. "That surgery they gave you was really intrusive, so you'll need some time to fully recover. After you do, though…" He shivered, looking back to Shuri. Even half asleep, Tony recognized the fear in his eyes. "Well—that's not important right now. Just lie back down, and we'll talk more when you wake up."

He sounded different. More  _mature_ , almost, like he'd come back from the mission with something he hadn't taken in. Tony wanted to know what it was, wanted to ask what had happened, but he was too disoriented to organize his thoughts and ask.

He laid back against the pillows and passed out.

 

* * *

 

The next time Tony awoke, he was more coherent. The next after that, even more so, and so on and so on until he was finally back to normal.

It took a few weeks. But then he was back on his feet, the stitches in his chest having been removed a while back, and finally he was able to move freely about the compound. He still wasn't at one hundred percent, but he was getting there. Slowly but surely, he was getting there.

As he recovered, he'd been fed more and more information about what was going on. Not everything, because he could tell the team was waiting for him to be completely healed before they sprung the rest on him. But…he could tell it was bad. Something serious was going on.

So far, he only knew a little. He knew that everyone really was alive, for one. He knew that Peter had survived the beam, saving Shuri and Steve in the process. He knew that the spaceman had awoken, and that his name was Quill, but no one would tell him why he was on earth or how he'd managed to crash his ship there.

Everyone did a good job of keeping the big secret from him. Pepper, though furious with him for going ahead with his work on the prototype suit—which Shuri was calling the power suit now, for reasons Tony didn't quite understand—had set aside her frustrations in the interest of helping him heal and keeping him in the dark as to what was going on inside the compound.

Peter visited him. Not quite as often as Pepper, since he seemed wrapped up in whatever was going on outside, but often enough. He'd explained as much as he could to him, which wasn't much. Though, there was one thing he was willing to share, eventually.

"How did you do it?" Tony had asked him during his most recent visit, when Peter was sitting quietly on the couch in the living room. "How did you survive a direct hit from that laser?"

And Peter had shrugged guiltily, staring down at his hands. "You won't like it," he'd said. "I—I don't want to scare you."

Tony wasn't sure he'd ever feel fear again. Not after watching Peter go down for a second time. But when he said as much, Peter didn't look convinced. He looked  _sick_ , even.

But Tony had worn him down. Until finally Peter had stood up, told him not to freak out, and the he'd  _changed._

He'd nearly passed out the first time he saw it. The first time Peter stood in front of him, closed his eyes, and let the contagion cover him.

It had taken a long moment for Tony to swallow down the lump in his throat, to compose himself before speaking. Peter just looked so  _alien_ , standing there covered in what could only be described as an organic suit.

"I'm still getting the colors right," Peter said sheepishly. "I mean—I can't make it turn bright colors or anything, but I don't want it to be  _clear_."

"Well it looks like it's working," Tony had told him, still trying to catch his breath. The suit was white, perfectly form-fitting and laced through with this delicate black webbing. There was no mask. Not yet.

Peter looked at him nervously, like he was afraid of his reaction. "I…know it's a lot to take in. But Mr. Stark, I think this is  _right_. Even though it looks scary, it feels right. This is what I'm supposed to be doing."

"Really?" he tried to joke. "Because I'm pretty sure you should be at school right now."

Peter looked away. That was another signal that something was wrong—even though the school year was in full swing, Peter hadn't gone back to Queens. Whenever asked, he gave some terrible excuse about wanting to hang around while Tony healed. But that obviously wasn't the case. He hadn't gone back to school for a reason, and it had to do with whatever was happening out in the compound.

"I'm trying to figure out how to use this suit to fight," Peter had told him then, trying to distract from the topic of school. "It's different, but it's powerful."

He went on, but Tony was distracted. Even though Peter was explaining all the things he'd been working on with his new powers, telling him about how he was trying to figure out how to shoot the contagion like he would shoot webs from his webshooters, Tony couldn't pay attention. He was too busy worrying and wondering.

Peter finished talking soon after that, and Tony was drawn back into the conversation. Rather unwillingly, since now he was fixated on why Peter wasn't in school and why no one would tell him what was happening outside.

"I guess you'll stop wearing my tech now, huh?" he teased, watching in a mixture of fascination and slight disgust as the contagion started to retreat back into Peter's skin. His clothing was left entirely dry, which was incredible in and of itself.

"Well…" Peter hesitated. "I'm not sure. I, um, didn't really want to tell you this, but apparently the last suit you made for me was…kind of hurting me?"

He stared. "What?"

"Well—maybe hurt is a strong word. It was just making things worse with my powers, and Shuri thinks that maybe using the contagion instead of your tech for a while will be good for me. I actually think I mostly have the hang of it. No more dizzy spells!"

"Geez." He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly exhausted. "I tried to help you, and I made things worse. Why does that sound familiar?"

"Oh—Mr. Stark, everything turned out fine, so we shouldn't worry about it. Everyone lived!"

He was right. And so Tony, in a display of maturity Pepper would have been proud of, took a deep breath and let it go.

There were more important things to worry about right now, anyway.

Something beeped, and Peter reached for his phone. The instant he read what was on the screen, he went pale. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

"Wait, kid!"

Peter stopped.

"When are you going to tell me what's going on? I'm all healed up. I think I deserve to know."

Peter fidgeted nervously, but Tony knew he wouldn't crack. He hadn't so far, and he wouldn't now. "I'm sorry. I'll talk to Dr. Banner about when you can come out, okay?"

And that was the best he was going to get.

 

* * *

 

Tony got to go out into the compound, eventually.

And then he understood.

The compound was in chaos. The Avengers were all over the place, in and out of the compound, in and out of meetings, doing whatever they could to prepare for a global threat. There were calls going in and out at all hours, even in the dead of night, as everyone readied for a great calamity.

At first, Tony had been confused. But then he'd come face to face with their visitor, the man that had crashed down from space, and he'd told him everything he needed to know.

Six stones total. Two on earth. One madman determined to claim them as his own.

The Avengers were still trying to figure out what to do. There were talks of sending the power stone away, but the mind stone was attached to a member of their team. Shuri had made suggestions of somehow removing it, but that had just led to more arguing and more uncertainty. T'challa had been called in, and so had Scott, but it still wasn't enough.

They were clueless.

Even Quill, the person who knew more about the stones than any of them, had no plan. All he could tell them was that the threat was coming, and when it did they would have to be ready.

So they prepared.

They made plans and scrapped them, spent hours arguing about what they should do next. And at the end of an entire week of planning, they'd gotten nowhere.

"They're coming," Peter said quietly, at the end of that week. The two of them were standing out in front of the set of glass doors in the kitchen, the ones overlooking the grasslands around the compound. The sky was dark, despite the fact that summer had hardly ended.

"How do you know?" Tony asked. His hands were in his pockets, projecting nonchalance when in reality he hadn't been relaxed for weeks. If Quill was even halfway right about what was heading their way, then he didn't have time to relax.

Peter just shook his head. "I can sense it. Can't you?"

He couldn't. But Peter seemed to sense a lot of things these days, maybe as a result of fully settling into his new powers. He seemed older than ever, and for the first time Tony felt a little strange about calling him  _kid_.

Peter shivered. "Mr. Stark, I don't think this is going to be like HYDRA."

"No," he agreed, "it's going to be way easier than HYDRA. We'll kill these guys once they show up, and then we'll all be safe."

"I don't…" He broke off, shaking his head. He looked afraid. "It's just that my senses are more heightened now than they've ever been. And this? What's coming? I've never felt anything like it."

Tony tried to act like that didn't terrify him, when it really,  _really_  did.

Peter turned his head back to the glass doors, looking up at the darkening sky. "We know that there are two stones on earth, at  _least_. They're coming for them, and they're coming for them now. And we're not ready."

"We will be." Even though he wasn't sure it was the truth.

Peter glanced back at him. "We can try to be."

Tony let the words settle for a moment, perturbed. Then he shook it off and tried to smile, stiff though it may have been, stepping up to place a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Why are you being so serious?" he joked. "What happened to all those times I'd have to ask you to focus instead of cracking jokes in the middle of a fight?"

But Peter didn't smile. He clenched his fists and shuddered and said, "Something is coming that has the potential to destroy the entire world, and then the rest of the universe. It's coming, and we're not ready."

He hesitated. Then, "I have the power suit."

"A suit that will kill you if you try to use it again."

"It's still something."

"It's your  _life_." Peter looked at him, horrified. "This is  _your life_  you're gambling with! _"_

"Yeah, and I'm deciding what to do with it. If it comes down to it, I'll use the suit. I'll use it and save who I can."

Peter clenched his jaw like he was biting back something truly explosive, then took a deep breath. "Tony," he whispered, "your life is ours, too. It's Pepper's, it's the team's, it's mine—and you can't throw it away like that! You heard Quill, no mortal can use the suit  _or_  the stone without dying. So if it comes down to it, you  _can't_  be the one that puts it on. It has to be someone else." Then, when he saw Tony about to interrupt, "No, wait! Let me finish. I…I know you have that streak in you, that hint of self-destruction that wants to sacrifice yourself at the drop of a hat if it means it'll save the ones you love. But being a hero isn't just throwing yourself blindly at the danger, it's keeping yourself from making the wrong choices! It's recognizing that sometimes self-sacrifice is foolish, even if it means someone else has to take your place. It's…having the maturity to realize that even though it hurts, there are times when you have to understand that someone else has to take the hit for you. I know that you want to just jump into the suit and take the fall when the time comes, but you  _can't_. You can't, because it would be a needless,  _selfish_  sacrifice, and none of us would ever forgive you for that. So please…even though it's what you want, you  _have_  to understand that you're not meant to be this story's martyr."

Tony just stared at him, stunned, letting the speech sink in.

Peter suddenly looked uncertain, like he thought he'd overstepped his bounds. "Um…did I do something wrong?"

"You—" He swallowed hard. "You called me Tony."

Peter went white as a sheet. "Oh—I'm sorry, Mr. Stark, I didn't mean to—!"

Tony laughed, a weak, appalled little thing, and Peter stopped.

"Mr. Stark…?"

He just shook his head. His heart felt heavy, like he was losing something. "Kid, when did you get so much  _taller_  than me?"

"I—wait, what? We're pretty much the same height, I—"

"Not what I meant."

Peter went very quiet, and Tony knew that he understood. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Don't be. It was dumb of me to drag you into this and think that you wouldn't grow up."

Peter opened his mouth as if to respond, but couldn't seem to think of anything to say. He pressed his lips together and lowered his head like he was being admonished.

Tony took a deep breath. Then he took another, and another still, feeling his heart beating strong against the inside of his ribcage. Peter was right. His life belonged to his team and his family now. He wouldn't forget that.

If the time came, and there was no other choice, he knew what he would have to do. But until then, he could stick around for as long as his family needed.

Suddenly there were footsteps behind them, breaking the silence, and then Shuri was poking her head around the corner.

"There you two are!" she exclaimed, stepping into the room. "We have Ross on the line; everyone else is in the conference room! Come on, hurry up!"

"We'll be there in a minute," Tony said, waving her off. And though she scowled, she didn't say another word as she turned and dashed back off to the conference room.

Peter closed his eyes for a moment, like he was steeling himself. Then he raised his head and turned. "We should go," he said. "Everyone will be waiting."

Tony watched him go. He watched him cross the room and drag a hand along the wall as he neared the doorway, stepping through it without looking back. Then he was gone, and Tony was alone.

He waited there for a moment, looking through the empty doorway. Something had changed. He knew this with certainty. It was something minute and unexplainable and immaterial, but it had changed, and it was okay.

Tony took one more deep breath, then followed after Peter.

He was walking with Shuri, when Tony stepped out into the hall. He'd caught up with her, and the two were walking shoulder to shoulder towards the conference room. And Tony relaxed, because even though something had changed, he knew that everything important had stayed the same.

He thought about calling out to the two, as they continued to walk. But then he saw Peter laugh and touch a hand to Shuri's back, feather-light but unmistakably present, and he decided against it.

Tony smiled to himself and stayed there, watching as Peter and Shuri vanished down the hallway. And then, when they were well out of sight, he began to follow after them.

There was work to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end!
> 
> As I've mentioned, I'm going to take a break from this series for a while. I'll come back to it eventually, but I need a little time to get back into the swing of school. Thanks for understanding! 
> 
> As always, I want to thank all of you for your kind words. You really keep me going, and I can't tell you enough just how much I appreciate you! Please don't hesitate to leave parting words in the comments, and I hope to see you all in the future.


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